How To Make a Beaded Rosette Medallion – Craft Tutorials

This project will help you learn to do applique rosettes on a small project. Beaded medallion necklaces have been popular for both men and women dancers for many generations. These instructions suggest using the new beading foundation as the material to sew the beads onto. It is a stiffened fabric that helps you keep the rosette flat while pulling the threads tight (Figure 1) Figure ...

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How to Make Ribbonwork – Straight Dance Ribbonwork Tutorial

This tutorial is for the cut and tuck method with a template. Making the design and cutting the template is probably a whole tutorial by itself!  For my ribbonwork, I use metal templates.  The pattern shown below is done using 2 different metal templates. When I first attempted ribbonwork, I was in awe of the details of the designs.  After you learn the basic concepts of how ribbonwork is make, however, the process is quite simple.  You are layering or singling stripes ...

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How to Make a Dream Catcher – Craft Tutorial

The Dream catcher now comes in all sizes and a great variety of designs. Depending on the artist making them and how they were taught. These instructions are the most basic of design and materials. We leave it up to you to choose how you want to finish the decoration of your Dream Catcher. How to Make a Dream Catcher ...

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How to Cut String Buckskin Thongs

Long pieces of thong can be cut from scraps of leather by cutting it from a circle of buckskin. Using the best part of the scrap, trim the edge so there are smooth curves, generally shaped in a circle. Begin on one edge and cut around until you have as long a thong ...

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How to Make Bead and Hairpipe Bandoliers – Craft Tutorial

BEAD AND HAIRPIPE BANDOLIERS Men’s bead and hairpipe bandoliers are common to a variety of Tribal traditional clothing styles. A number of design options are available using the same stringing techniques. The exact design are the option of the maker and can be made with a selection of beads, bone or plastic hairpipe, leather spacers, and simulated sinew. Make up a plan of color and bead/bone combination and test the length by stringing a single strand. Normally the strands draped over one ...

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How to Make Traditional Men’s Fabric Shag Anklets – Craft Tutorial

For a number of generations, it was common for Northern traditional men to wear white Angora goat anklets with long hair below their ankle bells. In the 1950’s they sometimes made these anklets from yarn. Recently other furs were used including Icelandic sheep and Tibet lamb. With natural hides becoming more expensive and difficult to get,  Fur Fabric Shag is now available for making these anklet kits. They look like Tibet lamb, but the hair is a bit shorter, measuring ...

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How to Make Porcupine Quill Earrings – Craft Tutorial

Porcupine quills were used by Native people of the Great Lakes area as decorating materials long before the introduction of seed beads by the European traders. This seemed to be true where ever this animal was found in the wooded areas of the northern continent. Quills were dyed colors with natural dyes, used in their round state, or flattened and used as a platting material. The most renowned  decorative use of quills in the Great Lakes area was and continues to ...

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How To Attach Metal Cones – Craft Tutorial

Photo 1 - Woodland bag, earily 1900’s. Cones atached with knot and fringe sewn into the bag seam. We have looked back over the years we have been doing this and can offer a few techniques and planning ideas. The use of small metal cones as a decorative piece goes back to the ...

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How to Make Feather Visors – Craft Tutorial

  Feather visors for Traditional Men dancers are worn under the front part of the Porky Hair Roach and extend out like a cap visor, but in a bird tail shape. They are made in various designs using tail feathers of various birds and, if you are lucky, from the same bird. The method shown here can be used when you are able to match up tail feathers as four left side and four right side and one center feather, but ...

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How to Straighten and Trimm Feathers – Craft Tutorial

  Turkey feathers are naturally curved. To make them look like Eagle feathers it is necessary to flatten the feather quill without damaging the feather blade. In our example here we will use commercially dyed white turkey wing feathers. There are a number of methods used by crafters over the years and all of them involve a heat source. So this is a project that requires your personal safety and the supervision of young folks trying it. One of the safest ways ...

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Straight Dancing

The Straight Dance from Oklahoma Native American Tribes is a formal, tailored, prestigious form of southern dance clothes.   The overall effect is of reassuring solidity, with everything closely matched and …

Crafts

How To Make a Beaded Rosette Medallion – Craft Tutorials

This project will help you learn to do applique rosettes on a small project. Beaded medallion necklaces have been popular for both men and women dancers for many generations. These …

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