How to Make a Daylily Horse

Create a beautiful little toy horse out of dried daylily fronds!

This is what the daylily plants look like at this time of year.

Pull a thick handful of the dried fronds to make a toy horse. If you don't have daylilies, you can make this horse with raffia, thick natural string, or dried grass, hay, or straw. Stiff dry materials will have to be soaked in water. I used fresh grass for my first horse. It came out beautifully but was an ephemeral toy. The grass shrank as it dried and the bindings fell off.

Get out your jute twine and scissors.

Trim the moist black ends off the fronds and discard them.

Tie string on either side of the fat tummy of your horse. Pull the string tight and knot.

The next knot goes behind the head.

Take a couple of the fronds and fold to make ears.

Lay the ears on top of the head. Tie another string on top of them very close to the head string. When you tighten it, the ears will pop up. Let the ends of the knot hang down for a forelock.

Bend the face down and knot around the muzzle with a long piece of string.

Leave the ends of the string long for reins.

Trim the muzzle. I made it square at the top and angled at the lower lip.

Pull the ends of the string through the mouth for a bit, pull behind the head, and knot into reins.



Divide the fronds in front into two legs, knotting at the top of each leg, and at the bottom above the hoof.

Trim the hoof.

Now divide the back of the horse into a tail and two fat rear legs.

Horses have a large haunch. Knot below the haunch on each back leg, and again above each back hoof.

Trim the tail to a length that looks right to you.

Now watch your horse come alive.

One of my children placed the horse in a treetop stable,

then took him to the beach to feed him some sand. The horse was very hungry and ate it all.