♪ [MUSIC] ♪ "Making Regalia" is
made possible in part by Bernina of
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designers of Native apparel, T-shirts, decals, and more, and by generous contributions
from viewers like you. Welcome back to
"Making Regalia" with me, Juaquin Lonelodge
here in Concho, Oklahoma. Home of the Southern Cheyenne
and Southern Arapaho tribes, my tribes. And once again, I am proud to bring you
another episode and today. We're going to be doing a
men's traditional bustle Now, I've been doing
bustles pretty much since I was 14 years old. I
started off doing men's fancy dance bustles. I
started working on my personally owned bustles.
I learned from different people and watching
different styles and stuff, and today, you know, I am going to show you
from ground up how to construct a bustle. So
we're going to do... we're actually going
to cut the stem, add the extension,
add the bottoms, actually do a little bit
of like thread work with it. But I'm going to show
you how my style is done. Now, I know I'm not the
best bustle maker in the world out there.
But, you know, I'm just going to show you
how I do it and hopefully the tips I show
you here, umm, you know, you can take them
with you and you know go with it and it helps you
out like making your own bustles. So, let me
get started with the traditional bustle.
There are, you know, a couple of
different styles of traditional bustles out
there. You have the men's traditional contemporary
which is more elaborate, kind of a bigger
style of bustle. Ahh, today, we are going to be
working with kind of an older style of bustle.
It's going to be the more round bustle. It's kind
of smaller but it's more traditional, more kind of
the older style. What I'm going to be doing today
is we've actually got some golden eagle feathers, and
this is actually from my friend, one of
my good brothers, Matt Littlecreek, out
there. He is Ojibway and he asked me to actually
make this bustle for him. I made a couple of them
for him in the past. He never paid me on
them. But, hopefully, he pays me on
this one. So, I'm kind of putting
you on blast out there, Matt. I'm just
kidding, you know, I'm only kidding. But,
here we go. We are going to start from the ground
up on how to do this. So, what we are going to be
starting with is the bare based eagle feather
and you can actually use this, you know, like if
you're working with turkey spikes, like
chicken spikes, anything. But, feathers
are pretty much all similar in their shape and
their texture. You'll see, like you'll have this stem
here and basically this is actually hollow. So,
what we are going to be doing is I'm going to chop the
very end of this and we're going to add an
extension to here. Now, depending on how big you
want your bustle is, that's what you're going to use
your extension for. The bigger the extension,
the bigger the bustle. The larger it will be. This
one since it is a very old style kind of
like just, you know, kind of like more traditional.
I'm only going to go from here and
measure from like the stem right where the feathers
start and go like 3 inches down. I'm going
to give, uhh, put my extension right in
here and there are a lot of different techniques
on how to actually put the extension as far as they
can go and then they'll fill it with Elmer's
glue and you know I've done that before and when I
first started out doing that I used to do
that all the time. Umm, but, it actually was very
hard to get through the stem. And now I've learned
a new technique which actually it's a
whole lot easier. So, I don't really do that too
much. I'm going to show you a faster way to do it
and all the bustles that I've done in the past I've
used this technique and I don't really have too much
of a problem with it. So, I'm kind of reliant
on this now. You know, it's a little bit faster paced, So, here we go. I'm going
to show you how to do this. So, right at the bottom,
what we are going to do is I'm just going to
measure from here to here and then I'm just
going to chop this off. So, I'll take my
trusty ruler, flip this around, look at the bottom of the
feather. Okay, 3 inches. So, I'm going to
go a little bit above 3 inches. Chop off. I'm just going to go
2 and mark it right there. Now, when you're
working with feathers like this, you know, like these little
stems will get all over the place. You know, and it's
pretty much easy. That's all you've got to do is
just cut it once and you know drop them
anywhere but the thing is, you know, like when I work with
these feathers I have them like all over my floor and
it's kind of a mess. So, you have to always
vacuum all the time. Plus, you know if they're
brand new feathers, like eagle feathers
sometimes, you'll have a lot of plumage and you'll
have to vacuum that up. So, I've got that, and now I've got, you know,
my dowel rod. I used to get these, you
know, real long ones, you know, from Home Depot
or Lowe's. I found that Walmart actually has the
3/8th dowel rods in a pack. You can buy them
for like two dollars and I think you get
12 of them. So, to cut costs and stuff,
this is kind of a better deal for me.
Now, if you see, when I take my dowel rod
I insert into like the little hollow part of the
feather. You can see it kind of gives a little
leeway because it's not, it's kind of loose and
so what I want to do is, I want to give that little
bit more stiffness. So, the other part that I use
a lot is I use your trusty masking
tape. Masking tape is perfect
for this. It's the perfect job for
it. And, you know, like I said in the past, I've
noticed people that, you know, a long time ago, my
uncles and people I used to look up to and what
not for making bustles, they used to fill this full of
glue which is a good idea. You know, it keeps it pretty
stiff. But if you ever take these
down or rebuild them it is a pain and sometimes
you'll damage this stem. Umm, so what I've done is like
to give it a little stiffness is I'll wrap this dowel
rod with masking tape. That way, you know,
you can get a perfect fit. And all I'm going to do is
just kind of jam it in there, and if you see it gives
it more stability. So, it's almost there. I want
to get maybe another round on there, and what we're
looking at is to make it perfectly flush.
So, there. Now, it is perfect. Good fit.
You know it's a good solid fit. You know, you don't see it
rocking back and forth. That's kind of
where you want it to get to. Now, the other part
is, I'm actually not going to use any glue. I'm going to
use my masking tape again. What I want to do is actually
get this perfectly flush. What I mean by flush is you
know I want it to, if you can kind of see,
there is kind of a rough edge where it goes down.
I want it to almost angle down and make it perfectly
flush. And the best way I know how to do it is just
take my masking tape and then roll it. So all I'm
doing is just going over just like so. And I'll do
it one more time just to get that groove out of
there. And the reason why I'm going to do that is,
get that groove out of there, is you know
some people use yarn to actually decorate the
stems. I use a lot of tape. Umm, the
tape, you know, I want it to get flush,
because if it has that little groove in there sometimes
it can make little like, ahh, I guess wrinkles in your
tape job, and you know, I want
to get this as good as possible. So, I'll keep doing that until I
feel it is, you know, it's almost flush
and now I can work with my tape. So, now that we've
got, you know, like our stem flush that's the
best way I can feel like, you know, that I don't feel
like when I do the tape it's going to cause
any wrinkles. You know, all I'm going to
do is just measure down and I want to make sure you know
like just about 3 inches. And, if you look,
right about 3 inches, that's just perfectly
where I want it. Umm, now working with
eagle feathers, you know, I'm going to make this
one uniform where all these feathers are
all going to be like 3 inches all the way across, just like
measuring from this fluff. So, umm, take in mind that I'm
going to use this one as a reference to reference all
the other feathers. So, they are all going to
be, the stem will actually be equal to 3 inches. So,
I'm just going to cut around. I don't want to cut, you
know, use all my strength. Sometimes you might break the
dowel rod. So, what I like to do is, I
just like you to know just roll it. So, I get a
pretty good round and then when I feel it is
weak enough, I just break it in half. So,
now, that I've got it done, you know, I've got my
extension in there with, you know, pretty sturdy
and the masking tape is going to hold it in place.
So, from here, umm, what we
are going to do is we are going to go
ahead and tape it, and then from there we're
going to actually add my bottom. My bottom is
actually a loop from here to here. So, that
way we can intertwine it with shoestring. The shoestring
will hold it all together when we all lace
everything up. So, I'm going to spill a little
trick or more of my trades. I use a lot of vinyl tape.
This vinyl tape works perfect. It's very bright. And I'm going to spill one of my
trade secrets here on the show. Umm, a lot of people ask
me where I get my tape from and I do a lot of
tape jobs as far as bustle works and stuff and if
you can see behind me like all that I did with
vinyl tape. Umm, and the cool part is the
way I do it is I'm going to try to jump in
front like real quick, is I created a template
when I do my tape jobs. Once I do a template, I
use like an old shish kabob stick or something
and I practice on these. You know, I kind of like
figure out what my color combination is
and you know, there are other styles
that you can do. You can actually do steps and
make, you know, like diamonds and tape
jobs. But you know I use for doing a
diamond, I actually use several different
like templates. But the reason why I use this
is that I make them perfect. Everyone of them
is actually an equal. Once you get your one
template done, all you've got to use
is a reference and every feather will come
out perfectly. So, that's one way I
do it. You know, It's a little bit more tedious
but once you have this, all you've got
to do is measure up, and if you
want to see, umm, as soon as I put this up
to the feather to my old bustles, you know,
it looks perfect, every single feather. But
that's why I use these. But this one, you know, I'm
just going to tape up just for the show.
The vinyl tape, my trade secret where
I get these is from, usually from sign
companies. I'll go into a sign company, and a lot of
them that make signs have got actually cut out
letters. They'll have scraps, and I usually just
go out there and like, "Hey, do you have any
scraps that you don't want?" or you know, "I'll
pay you 20 bucks for any of your scraps." Most of
the time they're more than happy to give
them to me. So, I usually walk
out with, you know, boxes full of just scraps
with a very cool tape usually gold metallics,
chrome and everything else, and fluorescents too.
So, that is where I get my tape jobs and
stuff like that. So, this tape
works really well, you know, once
it, I guess, touches itself, the adhesive like
works perfect. So, what I'm
going to do is pull this off, and I want to push
this right about where the feather is. So, I'm
going to put it like, pull it up a little bit,
and I'm just going to wrap it around, and I've done
this so much that you know you kind of start with
one side and move to the other. That way, you know,
you try not to get any wrinkles out of it. You
want to get a perfectly flush tape job. And,
there we go. Now it is pretty flushed.
Now, this bottom part it kind of doesn't stick too
well. But that is where we are going to actually
add our bottom to. So, you don't really have to
worry about that too much. But that's where we
get it and from here, I'm going to show you how
to get my bottoms. Umm, one of my trade secrets
is the very bottom piece which I attach the
feathers to is I use a lot of zip ties. Zip ties I
found you know really work well because they're plastic,
pretty durable and you know they're cheap,
you know. And if I have to replace
them, all I have to do is cut like my thread
work that I've attached it with and add a new one in
which takes probably like less than 3 minutes to do. So, I've got here, right
here are some zip ties, an actual long piece that
I've already chopped up. Now, I've chopped these
up and usually I keep them just because I do a lot of
bustles and you know I'm not even sure what the
measurement is on this. I kind of just eyeball it
and then if I measure this one, it's a little off but it's a
little over an inch and a half. So, about an
inch and three- quarters. You might want to make
them a little bit longer. But all I've got to do is
bend this in half. And I like to bend them
where they kind of touch, and there. Now you've got
a little like bend to it. And now all I need is my
twine. This is also called I think when we
actually shopped for it, crochet something,
whatever. I'm not for sure but I use it a lot and I
found that I pretty much use it for my bustles. The
cool part is that it comes in different colors. This
one I've got green. I'm just going to go with
all green on this one, and let my brother do
his own tape job. So, but, I want to keep it
uniform with the green. I found this at
Hobby Lobby; although, Walmart the last one I
went to quit selling it for some reason. I
don't know why. So, I'm going to ban Walmart
from here on out if I can. But, uhh, [laughing] here
on out, you know, this is for crochet. It
comes in different sizes. It comes in a 10 which is
kind of a smaller thread. I like to use a 3. The 3
is a little bit thicker, and I find that I can do
my thread work a little bit faster. So, umm,
that's kind of one of my like little cheat sheets
right there to use kind of with bigger thread. So it
takes up more space and it is actually faster to
use. So going forth, umm, you know, I've got
my bottom zip tie and what I'm going to do is I'm
going to take my feather and I'm going to bend the
zip tie in half and I'm going to attach it.
Umm, this way I'm actually making an
eyelet with this, and I'm going to use my thread to
attach it with. Now, this probably comes
from the originality of using thread, maybe. I'm
not sure. Maybe tying on like you know like arrowheads and
stuff like that, I guess, I mean. But, it's kind of the way I've
learned how to do it - is what I'll do is
I'll wrap it like that and I'll throw the excess of the
thread over here so I can tie a knot later and
then I'll just use this. Now, granted, you know, a lot
of bustle makers out there, y'all know that right here
your fingers are going to get a little raw. I mean it's going to start
turning into a rock. Depending on how
many bustles you've worked. One year, you know, I did
like, I couldn't even count
how many I did. But this finger got
pretty rough and sometimes I like to
use a little electrical tape here and there just to kind of
protect my finger. So, what I do is I just start to
wrap it and I kind of inch my fingers up and go all the way
around and attach it. Now, I'm using a
lot of tension on this and that way it can get secure
and very tight because I want this to stay on
as long as possible. So, I'm trying to,
you know, the idea is that you want to use
a lot of tension because you know you want this
to be perfectly on there. And also I ike to check it,
make sure it is flushed with a stem. Because if it's cockeyed or
you know like caddy whompus in a way, it'll make
the feather kind of bow this way or this way when
you actually put all the feathers together. You
want them all to be flush. Now, I got it pretty
tight and it's kind of... you're going to have to
learn your own trick to actually tying a knot, and so sometimes I
will use my teeth or this one I'll just use my
fingers because I don't want to show me biting
string on the show. So, here we go... and a perfect
knot. Now if I was at home I'd probably be using my teeth
to do that. But I've got to be
proper on the show as my director says. So,
I'm going to cut it, got a little excess and
sometimes it might be a little off. All I do is I
look from here and make sure it's flush. Sometimes you might have
to bend it or try to rotate it just a
little bit and I want to get these
perfectly flush. Because like I said
if it is off in any way it'll actually stick
up like this, or it will stick that way when I
actually interlace it with all the feathers together.
And it is a little off. Another cool trick is you can
also use a screwdriver. This one has like a little stem.
You just stick that in there and kind of twist
it and it'll start to move it. Now, I got it perfectly flush
the way I want it. And all I'm going to do, now, I
didn't actually have tacky glue. I prefer tacky glue.
It's kind of in a brown bottle with some gold
letters on it. I like that kind of glue. But today on this show I have
Elmer's glue. And working here at the tribe
I had to go to headstart and I stole this from the
headstart when they weren't looking. Umm, I stole it from
a kid that was eating it. Umm, but, you know,
it's better I use it than him. So, what I'm going to do... I don't really like to
use the little, I guess, the little tops. So, I'm just going to like
douse my finger with it and I imagine this tasted
pretty good to that kid because he was
gnawing on it. So, all I'm going to do is wet
my finger and we're just going to like submerge it
in the glue. And wrap it around, and we are going
to let it dry for a little bit. But you just want to get it
really really saturated. Because, like I said, you
know, you want this to stay on there forever.
And the glue will harden and once it hardens, you know,
it's going to be perfect. So, wrap it around, saturate
it, and we're almost done from here on out.
And all we've got to do is pierce the side of here
and then, we're going to interlace
it with another thread. And what I like to do
is actually put beads in here, just kind of space
out the feathers. So, here in this next
segment I'm going to show
you how to do that. Now, we have come to
the most important part, of bustle making. It's what I call, I'm not sure
what the word is for it, but I call it piercing. We're going to pierce the side
of the feather and go all the way
through it. Like I said, you know,
this is the cool part . From the style I do it,
as a lot of people like to jab like dowel rods all
the way through it. But since I didn't go all
the way through it, it's hollow. It is
a whole lot easier to do. Because, you know, all you have
to do is pierce one side, pierce the other side. Now, I've done this before
and a long time ago I used to use a drill bit,
you know, I used to go
through it and drill it. I found that it
weakens the feather. So, I don't like to use that
any more and that came from a lot of
mistakes that I used to do. So, I don't like to use any
drill bits anymore. No drills or anything. I
like to go old style and actually use an awl. A
cool trick that I've learned as working with this,
you know, with the stems, is if you heat this up
with a lighter, it goes through almost like
butter and the cool part is, you know, like if I were to
pierce it just with the awl itself, it could crack the stem and
actually cause a crack which later on could
go all the way down the stem damaging the stem and
you might have to do some repair work. So, what I
like to do is I like to take my lighter here. And
what I'm going to do is I'm just going to heat the
stem up and I'm going to get it pretty
hot, you know, pretty warm, and
when I do that, it's just going to you know,
it'll pierce it right through. Now, before I do that, umm,
piercing these feathers, you know, this is like
one way I like to do it. I like to pierce right close
to like where this feather starts. You know, I've
seen a lot of people go here and here. But I like to get
it like a little uniform here. Now, fancy dance bustles you
might want to go a little bit further
just depending on the style that you want to do. But for
this traditional bustle, since I'm not having
a lot of room to work with, I'm just going to go
right here. Now, if you're making
fancy dance bustles, you don't want to keep the
stem way out there because after awhile the
density of it, tends to weaken, and plus dancing fancy, you know, you're alway
jumping around. It could snap one of these real
easily. And you don't want to drop one
of these eagle feathers. So, what I'm going to do is
I'm going to pierce this kind of up high. So, what
I'm going to do is I'm going to heat this up. Get
this all nice and hot. Get it sterilized. And it looks
like it is getting pretty hot and I can get myself some
tattoos and alright, alright, alright.
There. It looks pretty hot. I'm going to keep it as hot
as I can get it. I'm just going to... I
want to keep it straight. And see how it went
perfectly through. I'm still eyeballing it
straight all the way through. And see it comes
through and like I said, you know, like once it's
hot it goes through really easy, just like that. And
you don't have to worry about it cracking the stem
and stuff like that. And I think the heat actually
gives it a little density. It gives it a little strength
too. So, I'm going to make sure it
goes through on both sides and now I have a perfect
eyelet right there. Umm, now, all we've got
to do is interlace it with my other thread and put some beads in
there for spacers. You're going to be doing this
for every single feather. So, now, we are going
to do a little close-up on showing you how to interlace
a bustle. At the bottom you see I actually
interlaced it with shoestring. This keeps the bustle together
and once you tie it tight, it holds the bustle
at the very bottom together. Here at the very top, I'm going to
interlace my thread, actually spacing it
out with different sized beads. Now, the feathers,
that I am working with are different sizes. Eagle
feathers are kind of known for that. So, what
I do, is, umm, I usually lace them up with
2 to 3 to 1 style of beads depending on the
size of the feather. This kind of gives me the form
and the shape that I'm looking for. So, once I
tie the knot at the very top what I like to do is
I like to lace another little piece of string.
That way I can tie it on to the backboard's poles.
This will actually... you can bend these poles and
actually shape the backboard, umm, to give
the bustle a different kind of shape that is
desired. That's pretty much what I do with all the styles of
bustles that I make. Okay. Now we've come to
the part where we are going to
actually... well, if you see, I've already
interlaced some of this already. So, but, it is very simple. I'll
take my pony beads which I find in, you
know, most craft stores. These ones are
easier to find. I'm just going to go with the
easy white color. Now, one thing I do
as far as bustle making, umm, I like to put a lot of
beads in there. This way, umm, that
way when I actually do fine tune it and shape
it, all I do is I take my handy dandy needle nose
and I'll bust beads to get a perfect shape.
So, go ahead and put, you know, like four beads,
three beads in there. It's going to look crazy at the
very beginning. Trust me, it's not going to look
right. But I only do that for a purpose because once
I start putting it up, I don't tie everything
down like or fine tune it. But it allows me to
fine tune because I can actually bust the beads
and get the shape that I want. So, going with this,
you know, like the top ones I'm only
going to use two beads. I've already done three
beads down here. But I'm still going to get
the shape of it. So, that's one thing you have
to look at. And one thing I did forget to mention is
sometimes I like to do one side of the feathers. Like,
I'll do one side of the wings as far as the extension, and then I'll go back and
reference it to the other side. That way, they are uniform. So,
what I'll do is, if you look, this one is the exact same
feather as this one. But it is the opposite. But it
looks perfectly and it actually lines up
perfectly at the tips. So, if you look, the
length is perfectly the same and they are
all sequential. So, every single feather is
equal to its brother. That's why I like to
call us brothers. So. Umm, each feather is the
same size as his brother. Now, all I'm going to do is
just interlace this with the hole that we pierced.
And at the bottom, the eyelet that we made
with the zip ties I'm going to use that for my
base string. And all we do is pierce that through, and bam!
Now we're almost finished. Sometimes, I'll tie one side
over here. That way, I get a little
bit of structure. But, from there, I'm going to
put this on the backboard and we're going to fine tune it
the way I want it to shape. Like I said, I've got a little
bit more beads in here than I actually
would when I'm fine tuning it. But, that's where
we are going to go from there. We are going to start
busting beads. That's the fun part. So, now we've come to my
favorite part. This one is where the beads
are going to fly everywhere. Umm, what I'm looking
for, is I look at our finished product here. It's almost our
finished product. But I look for the gaps
between the feathers. One thing is you have to shape
these feathers back and forth. You can bend them
up and down. But after the finger feathers, they're kind of the top fingers. There's kind of like a
little gap between here. And that's what I'm kind
of like looking for. I want to get
these uniform. So, all I'm going to do is
take my needle nose and I'm going to bust
some beads. I might shoot myself
in the face. And then I'm just
going to push them down and then I'm going to see how
that lays. This is what I call
fine tuning like a bustle. You kind of just pull
this string and once it is knotted on one
side, you know, you can work with it, and just
pull it until it actually tightens up. And then I want to get a good
space between there. I don't want to get them
too bunched up because I want everyone to
see the vibrant colors of, you know, the feathers. So, I'm just going
to space them out, keep spacing, and I'm
going to look and I'm going to try to make
them uniform on both sides. But this also will give me the
cut that I have. You know, like, that's the way it
kind of bows out to. So, I'm going to go through
and start busting some beads right here and then
here in a minute I'm going to show you what it
looks like when I'm done. So, here I go. Come on. This is like the best part
of actually making bustles. So, I'm just busting beads and
pushing it down. The more I bust beads, the
better the cups going to get. There is one right there. Now, it comes to the
finished product. Ahh, you know, this is going to
be our round bustle. I've got a little bit more
shaping to do. So, I'm going to do that.
Sometimes, just remember, when you actually
shape your feathers, you can actually
bend these out, you know, bend these
back and forth gently and you know actually get the
feathers to stay. So, I'm going to do more
shaping. I'll have a finished product
here in a little bit. I think on the next episode, we're going to start
doing some backboards.. So, I will show you how to
construct a backboard for your bustles. You can
utilize that for fancy dance bustles,
traditional bustles. You know, pretty much what oher
bustles you're working with. So, now, we're at
the conclusion of our show. I want to thank everyone out
there for tuning in with me, Juaquin Lonelodge, here on "Making Regalia." I'm bringing you more shows
that I'm coming up with and I want to thank
everyone out there with powwows.com and Facebook
for giving us "Likes." Once again, thank
you for tuning in. Ha-ho. ♪ [MUSIC] ♪ "Making Regalia" is made
possible in part by Warchild Society designers of Native apparel, T-shirts,
D-cals, and more. Warchild Society "More Savage
than Average." Visit: www.warchildsociety.com
to learn more.
