Feather Hair Clip
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This project uses the new popular hair clip as the way to fasten feathers in your hair. Small domesticated bird feathers can be used for the feathers. These are from farm grey goose.
Materials needed:
- 2 feathers that face the same direction
- 8 Pony size 5/0 beads
- 8 4mm metal beads
- 2 Spaghetti beads (Ultra thin bone or horn hair pipe can also be used.)
- 1 Ten inch length of 20 gage stainless steel wire
- 1 Hair Clip
Thread the wire through the hole in the closed end of the hair clip to the half way point. Twist the wire about three turns, leaving a loose loop in contact with the hair clip. (Figure 1)
Figure 1
Thread the beads on the wire ends according to your pattern. (Figure 2) Working on a towel spread on a table helps keep the beads from falling all over. When you have the beads on bend the wire so they don’t fall off when working with each feather.
Figure 2
Trim the quill of each feather right at the base of the feather’s blade. (Figure 3) This is the spot that you plan to have the beads meet the feather.
Figure 3
Cut the first wire so you have at least 2 inches of wire past the beads. (Figure 4) Using a pliers, test the length of the wire needed by forcing the wire up the quill until it is snug. (Figure 5) Pull out and measure the length of wire that went into the quill. Using that measurement, cut off the wire so that the distance from the beads to the end will fit into the quill tightly.
Figure 4
Figure 5
Put a strip of tacky glue on the wire length. (Figure 6) Force the wire into the quill and remove excess glue. (Figure 7)
Figure 6
Figure 7
Complete the same process with the other feather. Let everything dry. You can then snap open the hair clip and put your new decoration in your hair. (Figure 
Figure 8
Copyright 2004 by Loren Woerpel, Noc Bay Publishing, Inc.
TOPICS: Craft Tutorials, Featured
8 Responses to “Feather Hair Clip”
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Cool. I’ll be making a few of these for myself at some point.
cool
I make these as well but I use fishing leaders to connect it to the clip, this way the feathers can rotate and move better as people dance. As well I use leather lace and beads that can hold the quill inside it so I do not have to cut the quill at all! You can also use the pinch clips that look decorative and use more strands of lace and feathers to really showboat your fav feathers.
There are a lot of special tricks to attaching feathers to get the “dance” you are looking for. Yours is a good way too Tibiki. Any other ideas out there?
Nice, I will be makeing some of these.
You showed this well, got anymore?
Thanks
Shilo
Yes, we have more coming!
Keep an eye on this page:
http://www.powwows.com/category/articles/powwow/crafts/
wonderful idea, I have made many feathered hair clips but not like this… This looks great, thanks.
Thank you for this tutorial. I made a hair clip, with this as my basic guide, for a young Kwe and used embroidery floss on the quills in a straight wrap around pattern. I hope it stays together well and she can dance with the feather clip on…never tried it before. I am most concerned that the wire will come unattached but my project looked beautiful when completed.