How To Make A Feather Garland

As promised, here is a quick guide to making a feather garland. 

You will need feathers, some card in the colours of your choice, some yarn or string, glue, scissors, and cocktail sticks

First, make your feather templates. I roughly copied the outlines of four of the feathers I found, choosing shapes and sizes I liked. I used cheaper, thinner card for this.

Now draw around as many feather templates as you like, on as many different types of card as you like. I aimed for maybe ten altogether, a couple in each colour. 

To create the central fold, I drew a curved line freehand onto the feather with the point on a pair of scissors, then gently pressed the crease into shape with my fingertips.

To help reinforce the quill part of the feather, and to make the tying of string easier, I glued cocktail sticks to the straight ends.

Then, rather than try and attach the feathers directly to the horizontal string on the garland, I tied individual lengths of string to each feather. This meant I could easily move them along and vary the length.

Once the string was knotted, I glued the loose end flat against the cocktail stick to keep it tidy and out of the way.

Then it was a question of sitting in front of the mantel and attaching each dangling feather to the garland. 

The whole process probably took a couple of hours. The more feathers you make, the longer it's going to take. Happy garland making!