Eagle Feather Fan VLOG & (kind of) Tutorial

[Music] tastes me so today if you can tell from the title I'm going to be making a feather fan a flat fan whatever you want to call it I don't know I originally started out this video idea with the intention of providing it as like a tutorial but see I already started on the fans and after doing quite a bit of work on it I realized that I'm not exactly the most knowledgeable about making fans so why do I think that I can offer you a tutorial I did do a good amount of research I don't know anybody personally who makes fans the only person that I thought I could ask about this because she makes all other kinds of items and she's like that's a signer label in the native world basically and she was like no I don't even make them I actually paid somebody to make mine so I was like well okay I'm turning to the Internet then so I looked in all kinds of forums and different places where Native people share methods with one another mostly the pod in the palace talked on forums on a point I feel like I found enough information to effectively make my own fans because it's just not within my means to be able to pay somebody to make one in addition I just like trying my hand at making different items so instead of doing this video it's a tutorial I'm just kind of doing a vlog style so fat nobody gets mad at me for telling them how to do something and then it doesn't work out for them so each teacher Chelsea with bad skin I just wanted to pop in real quick because I had filmed instructions and how to do florette feather work and thread work and then I realized that that would have made this video a good like half hour longer than it already is right now so I think what I will do in the future is make separate videos for each floor at work and for thread work but I'll still be showing you how to do how I did the rest of the fan construction and little snippets of clips of me doing the the floor at feather work in the thread work but it's just it would have made the video way longer so look out for those videos in the future and let me know if you even want me to do them I'll probably do them anyway and back to the video the first thing I'm going to do real quick just kind of go over what kind of materials that I used also if you hear my kids in the background they're kids they're loud I can't make them like stop playing and having fun because mommy wants to film so the first item that you need obviously are some feathers I am using eagle feathers the next thing you're gonna need is a fan handle I got this from a shop called the wandering ball I'll link them down below I try to buy from a shop called Knox Bay which is a shop that's actually local to myself but they were out of the straight fan handles they only have the wing tine and I don't have wing feathers I wanted a straight fan just want to throw this up that a lot of people talk about using like wooden spoons and then creating a slit in them that's an option as well or you can make your own fan handle you know ok next thing you're gonna need is a wooden dowel I got let's see what size of this 3/16 size 3 out of 16 these are usually really cheap like not even a dollar you're gonna want some masking tape now this next part a lot of people have different types of glues that they use I seem tacky glue with like the number one thing that people like to use for Florida feather work and I typically really don't like tacky glue so I decided to put my dislike for tacky glue aside and follow some people and it worked for me so also some gorilla glue some clear gorilla glue and then here's the part where we talk about our creativeness and you know this is totally up to you what you want to do I decided I wanted to do some Flores feather work on my stand so I purchased some threats feathers from belief crazy crows whereat feathers are these ones look like the plumage on the bottom and then yeah we're doing for other work I also found out that some good hair cutting scissors are needed and that's because the others are like cutting hair basically so regular scissors don't work well for that but you're gonna need regular scissors as well and you don't have good hair cutting scissors have some nice sharp scissors on you in addition to Flora feather work I'm also doing thread work so I got all kinds of threads to do thread work these are just cotton thread and then I also have like this holographic shiny thread this is just like a creative things pick whatever colors you want and then the last creative thing I guess is you will need something to decorate your fan handle I will be using black dyed deer hide don't know if I'm going to use beadwork on that all right whatever yes I am um I'm gonna decide when I get there and then the last thing that you're going to need is I don't have it right in front of me at the moment but you're gonna need some wood filler not what glue wood filler because the foot here that you put the fan the feather feathers in once you place the feathers in there you can't just glue them you actually need to like fill up the negative space in there so that those feathers are stuck and they don't fall because you don't want them to so the fan that I'm making will be a seven feather fan I know there's typically fans that have like 25 mountain feathers on them I guess which that's not what I'm doing so I already have six of the feathers completed here you just want to take a look at them they're not perfect my floor at work isn't you know I'm not experienced it's my first time ever doing it same thing with the threading but you know unless you're looking closely at it and I don't think it really matters all that much all I have now is just one more feather to do and that's the feather that I'm going to use as demonstration for the video so what I did for all these feathers was I took the very first one that I made and I used that as a reference I never changed the reference feather just because then it would sort of end up like the game of telephone where the the width of like the the thread sections would change and I don't want that and this is the feather that I'm going to be practicing on I have all the dark colored feathers and then I'll be having two white ones in the middle now for this particular feather that we're doing today because the two white feathers will be in the middle I know the two feathers in the middle the two white ones in the middle they actually look slightly different from the rest of them and that's just to add more accent onto them so all right before we get going on that the very first thing that we need to do is straighten the feathers so typically feathers they might have sort of this curve to them and we really want them to be nice and straight well I took a few pictures to show an example of what a straightened feather would look like I'll link a video in the description that you can go to if you want better instructions on how to straighten the feather [Music] okay so I think that that feather looks straight enough after this you need to take some sort of weights to stamp onto the feather so that so I just grab these random books that my husband got these let's see home handyman encyclopedias and guides published in New York in 1961 I don't know why we have these I'm just gonna let these books rest on the feather now we're going to cut the dowel and I'm going to use the white feather of the reference for how long to make the bowel when you're doing all the rest of the feathers you kind of want to figure out how long it needs to be so that it can stick into the handle and make the feathers I would say the base of the feathers match I'm going to go ahead and lay this next to the other one to mark where I think I want to cut it and then I have this like regular scissors and I'm going to cut off that mark I mean I'm sure you could use like a razor something though for this I'm just kind of like cutting into it all around the dowel and then snap it oh no there we go that's the first time that's ever happened where it kind of up a little but it looks fine on this part I don't know what that doesn't really matter oh nice thing we're going to do and take those same scissors and cut off the end of the quill if you notice inside of the quill it's hollow and that's where we're going to be placing this owl now these quills are fairly small but when I was working with these large feathers here the quills were really big and the dowels they were like smaller than the inside of the quill so I actually took a little bit of masking tape and just wrapped a little bit around on the side of the towel that's going inside the quill and then when I place it in there and basically it thickened up the dowel so that it wouldn't move around inside this quill is not that thick though I actually place the dowel right in the quill and then thank you now you don't want to be doing too much forcing because you don't want to impact the quill and cause it to split if you cause it split then it'll end up splitting you know all the way up pretty good so I think I've gotten it just as far up as I can now I'm going to compare it to my other one and see if the basis of the feathers match up so I have the basis of the feathers here matched up and then I'm going to look at the bottom of the devil and it's actually not even so I'm going to mark where to cut and then I'm going to cut that end off that way the Devils are the same size all right this next part it might piss off a few fan making veterans out there I am NOT going to be wrapping this and any kind of leather or you know like buckskin or whatever people like to use typically what you see is like a white type of leather like a white and part of the buckskin and they'll wrap it around and that's why you see like a white section on most people's fan I'm just going to take some masking tape and wrap it around now I did not come up with the idea of masking tape myself I will link the video where I got the masking tape idea from it should be the video titled making regalia or something like that he was actually making a bot ball and he was actually the one who suggested putting to take on the devil before putting it inside as well so I'm going to take this tape and I'm going to begin wrapping around probably like right here a quill stop right here and I'm going to start wrapping about right here I'm going to kind of start at an angle I'm gonna hold the plumage wrap the tape around and then once I get it all the way around I'm going to clip it and then add the tape let's see the tape and right here I'm going to just kind of add the tape right before it almost and I know I'm stumbling my words a little bit but um I hope you get it this is because I don't want the tape to end up being thicker in some areas and Center and others that will not really affect your feather work but it will affect your thread work once I run out I'll just grab a little bit more I find it easier to work with smaller sections of tape if you notice that kind of changes thickness but right here that's where I'm going line up the next section of tape as you can see the tape stops right here and I'm not gonna worry about taping the edge of the double no reason not to and no reason to so it's it whatever so for the next part that's where it gets interesting this is where you want to design your floor at work [Music] [Music] okay so I let this sit here and dry for a little bit and I'm going to get started on the threading portion now [Music] you [Music] [Music] now nighttime alright so I realized that I need to cut out the leather that I'm putting on my fan handle before I actually start arranging the feathers with the handle and then putting them in there with the wood filler I have this black dyed deer hide so I'm going to go ahead and cut it out to size and then after I place the feathers in with the wood filler and then I will apply this leather to it and then I also have this little strip that was cut for something else and ended up not being used and it actually fits like perfectly around the base of this handle so I think what I'm gonna do is put this on the base of the handle and then cut fringe off of it so it'll have some like small little leather fringe ease coming off of it [Music] isn't this cool okay then I'm gonna work on the glue filler which I have right here Durham's or whatever I don't know it was my husband's he had it I didn't have to pick it up or anything so ya figure this out okay I grabbed a little medicine dropper here hopes that this would help me I'm just trying to fill up this cavity and then I'm going to stick the feathers into the wood filler alright I think that might be enough for now and now I want to do is pop in these two very slowly [Music] okay so I have the wood filler inside of here and in between all of the feathers I've kind of fiddled with the feathers to get them in the space that I want them so now I'm going to put this bottom side down on this cutting surface I have here and I'm gonna put this cutting surface up out of space where my kids and my cat can't get to it but another trick I also learned from somebody is to kind of set something on top of these in order to keep them from kind of twisting throughout the night or whatever some people they taped them I'm just going to do this I think that that's good enough maybe I'll do it with wait so I'm setting it on the handle and I'm setting it on the feathers I'm gonna let this sit overnight and then meanwhile while it's drying I'm going to think about how I'm going to decorate the black hide that's going to be covering the handle because I don't want it to just be plain old black hide I think I might do something just a little bit of beadwork nothing too extravagant so good night I'll see you tomorrow okay okay dad never worked with what feller before Wow the only thing the only complaint that I have if I was a little too messy in between dolly or the Doyles doilies how am I gonna it's too early I can't even speak and I got some like wood filler on the sides of this here it's just a little bit of what filler that looks like it well I can like pick it off read them out really far and they're not like they're kind of wanting to so two days two days after I started filming and I have a fan here yesterday I still need to work on getting the feathers straighter now I'm gonna work on decorating the Panhandle so I spent all day yesterday working on this just some bead work I used my for colors and some rhinestone banding and then attached it to no mother and men to have seven stars and ended up with eight don't know how I did that anyway so this is going to go on the front and then we'll have this piece on the back and then I have this piece here that I went up on the bottom for fringing now what I want to do is have these kind of that's where the fan handle is so these are gonna be a little higher and then I have some pinking scissors here and I'm gonna go ahead and cut like little zigzags at the top and then I went ahead and grabbed some paintbrushes but I don't really care about and that way I can spread this gorilla glue evenly around the fan handle in order to get a nice clean bond between the leather and the wood so I'm just gonna go ahead and [Music] [Music] handle rubber band wrap around there and keep the leather in place because gorilla glue doesn't exactly dry that quickly [Music] okay so I just spent a while getting the front part glued to the fan handle gorilla glue states that you need to have whatever your bonding like clamped together for at least two hours so I'm gonna let this sit here for a few hours and then I'll take all the rubber bands off and put the back on see in a bit okay so it's been I think like three and a half hours it's been a while a lot longer than two hours so I'm gonna take these rubber bands off in fact the the bottom portion here this has been on much longer probably like four and a half hours so alright so as you can see I took all the rubber bands off and the gorilla glue worked out just fine for getting that curved glued it looks really nice so after this I'm just going to take the back and then I'll glue that on now the same as before I'm going to put rubber bands on there and the leather pieces met up nicely and then I'm gonna let it sit for a few hours and here it is and then the next thing I'm going to do is just cut the fringe on that bottom piece and keep my feathers away from my cat anyway I did not like the way that my feathers looked I could not get them straight so like I don't know if you remember or if I even said in the video it was days ago I literally don't remember if I said it I was like well I'm just gonna put the fan together and then I'll worry about straightening the feathers after that I just wanted to get the fan together so that it could sit overnight and the wood filler would set right well I couldn't get the feathers to stay straight I even tweeted something out like hey people what's your tips and tricks on straightening feathers and I tried a couple of the recommendations and it just it was not working for me and so my friend seen my tweet and he ended up giving me a call and we talked on the phone I showed him the fan and he was like oh like can you move the feathers I'm like no they're heavyset in there he's like oh I would have put just the feathers on one side on the other side and vice versa right and when I tell you when after he said that and like okay we got off the phone after talking for a little bit and I sat there thinking about what he said I was like oh my god I wish I would have called him or talked to him before did the wood filler because he is so right I place the feathers in a way where their curl the curl of their quill would go outward right and I did that because in each section of the feather one side is not as wide as the other side of the quill and I wanted the wider portion to be on the outside of the fan and for some reason I was just so set on that and I just thought you know I'll just straighten the feathers and make them straight so when I arranged them I was like okay yet this will make total sense when these feathers are straight and it would have but I couldn't get the feather straight and then I realized like after thinking about what he said like if the curl of the quill curls inward instead of outward then it actually makes sense so I couldn't move the dowels around because of the wood filler I even tried taking I stick I still have it Yeah right here I even tried taking a drill a big like power tool drill and drilling the wood filler and it just didn't work I couldn't get deep enough my husband tried using an actual like drill gun with a longer bit and I'm just like I told him like you know what this isn't gonna work the only thing that I think I can do is rip up the floor at work I should ask if y'all were sitting down first rip up the floor at work remove the feathers from the dowels and then start over on the floor at work so that's exactly what I did I remove the floor at work and then switched up the feathers so that they were arranged in a shape that I like I saved most of the thread work so now what I have to do like even though this fan would have been done yesterday had I arranged the feathers appropriately to begin with now what I have to do is tape the feathers back on to the dowels and then redo the the feather work and just like this one section of the thread work hopefully that's possible but um you know I just it sucks but I would rather go through the extra work right now then walk around the powwow with like a dumb-looking fan so much later that the old narrator got tired of waiting and they had to hire a new one are you ready are you ready she is finally done so I really did take all the feathers not all of them I think only one didn't come off but I took most of the feathers off of the dowels after ripping up like this floor at work and then I redid all of the floret feather work and then I redid these portions of the thread work which was really difficult I had to thread this right into a needle and then I had to like hold it and then pop the needle through like the gaps between the feathers and then you know like very slowly wrap it around and I guess because I had to re like take off the feathers and reattach them to the dowels there is a little bit of inconsistencies and like the UM the levels I still have to snip off the extra threads here don't mind that um but from far away you know you really can't tell I don't think and I kind of don't care like I really like it and I'm very proud of myself I made my first fan I know everything that I need to know for any subsequent fans that I might make and yeah I hope you like it I need to either make or get a case for it probably learn how to make one anyway and I'll be using it in my first pal this weekend it's a virtual powwow don't worry and yeah so I hope you liked this video I hope it was helpful and or entertaining and I'll see you on the next one mama pig webmin [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Chelsey Moon

Views: 18,314

Rating: 4.8223495 out of 5

Keywords: feather fan, flat fan, pow wow fan, peyote fan, eagle feather fan, hawk feather fan, turkey feather fan, native american, indigenous, pow wow, ojibwe, anishinaabe, native youtube, native vlogs, jingle dress, womens traditional

Id: --z9bPa9kxs

Length: 35min 38sec (2138 seconds)

Published: Sat May 02 2020