Bead and Hairpipe Bandoliers

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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Traditional Men’s Fabric Shag Anklets

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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Porcupine Quill Earrings

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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Attaching Metal Cones

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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Feather Visors

  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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Straightening and Trimming Feathers

  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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Feather Hair Clip

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 ...

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Sewing Fringe Tips and Tricks

  We are often asked how to sew ribbon, flat fringe, or yarn into dance outfits or shawls for Grass Dancing, Fancy Shawl and other dance styles. The trend is to use these materials in very colorful designs. There are probably a number of ways to do this depending on your sewing experience, but Tracia Walksnice Nelson of our staff has had great success developing the method we describe ...

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Mounting Deer Toes

  Deer toes have long been used as natural bells for dancers to keep rhythm with the drum. Some traditional men dancers are returning to this natural sound. Deer toes also can be used as decorative pendants. When attaching a group of them to a wood hand wand, they become a rattle. Deer toes are often recovered during the deer harvests held annually throughout the United States. If you are a hunter, you can process them yourself. Depending on your state regulations, ...

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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

Attaching Metal Cones

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 …

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