Feather anklets tutorial

This tutorial will be ridiculously long, but it includes problems to avoid and troubleshooting. XD Hopefully that makes up for it?
This will just be for the feather cuffs.
First, supplies we used:
1. http://shop.hobbylobby.com/products/leather-bookmark/
Two-pack of leather bookmarks from Hobby Lobby.
This is the part of the anklet that serves as a base for the feathers. You can use other materials, but it needs to be something that will be durable, rough enough on one side to hold tacky glue, thin enough to puncture with needle or stapler, and soft/smooth enough on the other side to avoid chafing your skin or damaging any socks you choose to wear.
These bookmarks are long enough to wrap comfortably around our ankles with about a 1/4” gap at the back, which we prefer, because it gives our achilles tendon room to flex and move.
The bookmarks have a hole already punched in them.
We will need that hole later.

2. Feather trim of the colour of your choice. Here is what we used: http://shop.hobbylobby.com/products/…r-trim-140905/
Here is a black version of the same thing, showing the packaging: http://shop.hobbylobby.com/products/…r-trim-161893/
The trim is basically hundreds of feathers with their shafts all connected by a single long, strong thread, on which they are affixed just like beads. If you cut the thread anywhere on its length, a couple feathers will fall off the thread on both sides of the cut, but it won’t unravel the whole trim unless you deliberately try removing the feathers from the thread.
The way the feathers are strung, any single feather can by rotated the opposite direction of the adjacent feathers, meaning you could theoretically have them facing both ‘up’ and ‘down.’ For this guide, we’ll be assuming the feathers are oriented ‘down,’ with the quills upward.

3. Feather fluff, if the trim needs other colours to be correct to what you want:
http://shop.hobbylobby.com/products/…-fluff-245720/
Ideally, the feathers for this should be as long as the trim feathers, or a little bit longer, and very soft and flexible. Hard-shafted feathers like wing and contour feathers are not going to adhere well without intervention with some very powerful expensive glue or a needle+thread.
We used white fluff, to make up for how dark the natural brown of the feather trim is.

4. Tacky glue http://shop.hobbylobby.com/products/…queeze-497024/
Note: the link we provided is a pretty poor value for the volume of glue. We recommend getting this at wal-mart or a similar store, where you can get much more than this for the same price.
That said, you won’t need more than is contained in the tube shown in the link.
This is the most vital method of connecting parts for this project, and Elmer’s glue will NOT work.
Stronger glues may contain chemicals that dissolve keratin and natural oils on feathers, so we don’t recommend them. Tacky glue is ideal here. Sobo would be decent but slightly weaker.

5. A strong, ordinary office stapler, with ordinary sized staples.

6. A soft, unabrasive, strong ribbon, minimum 1/2” wide, preferably 3/4” if possible. Having it be velvety on one side will do you lots of favours. This is how we tie on the cuff, and it will be touching your skin or sock directly, so make sure it’s not so thin or so rough that it hurts you.
We also advise you get it in a colour that will be easy to hide excess length among the feathers.

7. scissors or a pocket knife, for trimming the ribbon and the lengths of feather trim

Optional 8. Needle and thread, if you lack a stapler and staples. The needle and thread will both need to be strong enough and thick enough to work with leather (or whatever alternative material you chose for your base).

Next, prepping the base of the cuff:

1. First, make sure the base material you selected (in our case, leather bookmark) is the length and width you need. You will want it to be at least 1 1/2 inch wide (for the feathers to have enough of a base to attach to it), and long enough to wrap most of the way around your ankle, while still having a narrow gap at the back to allow your achilles tendon to move freely without abrasion or tension. This gap on most people will be about 1/2 inch ton 3/4 inches wide.

2. Measure out two lengths of the ribbon you chose. We made each length one foot (30 cm) long. You will be doubling these in half later, so it’s wise to err on the side of more length, not less.

3. Fold over one length of the ribbon so that it is halved. Line this up on the side of your bookmark / base material WITHOUT THE HOLE, so that the folded end of the ribbon is on the ROUGH side of the material, not the smooth side. Both tails of the ribbon should hang free.

You want there to be a half-inch MINIMUM overlap of the ribbon onto the rough side of the base, because we will be stapling the ribbon to the base.

4. On the side of your base material / bookmark WITHOUT THE HOLE, use the stapler to firmly attach the ribbon to the base. This will be tricky to keep it lined up and to get the stapler to punch all the way through. If you have needle-nosed pliers handy, they will help you make sure the teeth of the staple dig in and fold over properly.

THIS IS IMPORTANT: Depending on how you stapled the first time, the ‘teeth’ end of the staples will be either on the rough ‘feather’ side of the base,
or on the smooth ‘against your skin’ side of the base.

If the teeth are on the ‘skin’ side, they will be scratchy and sharp on your skin. Ways to avoid this hazard is to either a) staple it so the teeth are on the feather side in the first place or b) go back with the stapler facing the opposite direction and rotated perpendicular (90 degrees, right angle) to the original direction of stapling, and place staples so that they actually PIN DOWN the teeth firmly into the base leather. This way, the staple’s teeth cannot bite your skin.

We did the latter of these two ways, so we ended up using four staples per ribbon, to attach the ribbons to the leather bases.

5. Thread the free tails of the ribbon through the hole on the opposite end of the base. If you got the leather bookmarks as your base, and if you have a thick, velvety ribbon, then they will JUST BARELY be able to pass through. Once both ribbons are threaded through this hole, they won’t slip too easily, so you don’t need to tie any knots.
If you chose a different base or a smoother/thinner ribbon, then tie a knot at the very END of the ribbon.
For the rest of the project, you’ll need to be able to lay the whole base totally flat with the rough side of the leather / base facing you. this means you don’t want to put any knots in the ribbon that will keep you from doing this.

Now is a good time to verify for yourself that the cuff and ribbon together are long enough to fit comfortably all the way around your ankle.

All of the above steps can be completed with a strong needle and thread, if you have no staples or don’t want to use them.

Next, attaching the feather fringe to the base:

1. KEEP THE RIBBON THREADED THROUGH THE HOLE ON THE BASE, BUT DON’T CINCH IT TIGHT. THE BASE NEEDS TO LAY FLAT WITH THE ROUGH SIDE (feather-attaching side) UP AND FACING YOU. We can’t stress this enough; it will be very hard to thread the ribbon back through the hole if you take it all the way out now and then try to put it back after you’ve installed the feathers. Doing it this way, you risk less damage to the feathers.

2. Lay out a work space where you can lay things flat that have glue on them. Tacky glue will wash out of clothes, but it sticks very strongly to surfaces, so avoid glue messes early to save yourself the work of scraping them off later. We used scrap paper spread out on a card table. Newspaper works fine, too, as does any broad piece of leftover rag or cloth you might have lying around.

3. Place the bases (with ribbons now firmly attached and threaded through opposite hole) flat on the workspace with the roughest side of the material facing up toward you.

4. Get out your feather trim. Unwind enough trim to match the length of the base, and use your knife or scissors to cut it to that length. You WILL lose a few feathers off the trim at the cut places. This is okay, as it actually makes for less crowding and easier gluing later. If you lose more than six feathers, we suggest cutting a new length instead, but fewer than that will be just fine. A full pack of trim is five feet long (a little under two meters), so you’ll have PLENTY.

LEAVE THE FEATHERS ON THE STRING. If you take them off, this might take hours. If you leave them on, it will take less than an hour.

5. Decide how you want the feather trim to lie on the base. The way we did it, we had the very tips of the quills exactly aligned to the edge of the base, so that the strongest parts of the feathers were all attached and so that the quills didn’t criss-cross over each other and weaken the gluing job we did.

6. Once you’ve decided how you want them to lie, cover the rough side of the base with tacky glue. It doesn’t have to be drowning in glue, but making sure that the whole perimeter and most of the middle is covered in glue lines will make the feathers hold better.

WARNINGS:
Tacky glue dries fast, but not at light speed. Be prepared: if you pick up the feathers before the glue dries, they will come off very easily.
If you don’t set the feathers up in the glue within the first full minute of glue application, the glue will start drying in the air.
If you get glue on your fingers, even just a little, GET UP AND WASH IT OFF, THEN DRY YOUR HANDS. The last thing you need is to start accidentally pulling feathers off because your hands are stuck to them.

7. Now, accounting for those warnings, and once the glue is in place and you are ready:
Line up the feather trim with the base, and press them firmly into the glue.
Don’t use anything to weigh them down on the base, or it will get stuck to the feathers and cause many of them to pull away from the glue as it dries.

8. DO NOT PICK UP THE PROJECT UNTIL IT HAS HAD AT LEAST FIVE MINUTES TO SET UP. Do not pick it up by the fringe of the feathers until it has had at least ten minutes; use the base or the ribbon to handle it, or the quill ends of the feathers, instead.

—————-

Next, adding accent / colour adjustment feathers:

For this step, we used the white feather fluff. We only chose feathers whose lengths were similar to or longer than the fringe feathers. shorter stuff won’t usually show up visibly.

This is when it is extremely important that you don’t pick ANYTHING up if you have glue on your fingers. If your fingers are sticky, you will do damage to what you have made so far.

1. Select the feathers you want by length, shape, curve, colour, etc. and LAY THEM OUT BEFORE YOU EVEN TOUCH THE GLUE AGAIN.

Lay out MORE feathers than you think you will need, that way you don’t have to reach back into the bag with sticky fingers just because you underestimated what you’d want to include.

Lay out how many you want for each cuff, so that you have even proportions.

2. There are three places these feathers can go:
a) on top / outside of the fringe feathers
b) underneath / behind the fringe feathers, between the fringe and the base
c) nested into the fringe feathers

We recommend doing several of each, and staggering their placement as evenly as you can for the most natural look possible.

In each case, there is a specific way to apply glue to the quill end of the feather so that it will stay attached as strongly as possible, without showing glue.
a) for ‘outside’ feathers, glue the underside, including part of the down, and stick it DIRECTLY onto the side of the fringe that will be exposed to viewers.

b) for ‘underside’ feathers, glue a LONG way up the side that will touch the back of the fringe, and glue a LITTLE BIT on the opposite side of the quill, the part that will touch the leather of the base. Once the glue is applies, insert the feather between the base and the back of the fringe, and press lightly so that the inserted feather sticks to the rest of the fringe. This will keep it from rubbing off against your ankle.

c) for ‘nested’ feathers, glue about 1/3 of the length of the feather on BOTH sides of the feather. if the feather has down, get glue in the down. Slide the feather into the center of the fringe, between other fringe feathers, and squeeze it in from both sides, so that it adheres nicely to the feathers touching it.

Last, TO BE DONE AFTER GLUE IS MOSTLY DRY:

1. Take out the stapler, and being careful to keep the teeth of the staples on the OUTSIDE of the cuff, so they don’t scratch your ankles at all, staple the base and the feather fringe’s quills directly together.
Only two or three feathers will be caught under the teeth of a given single staple, but that will be enough to keep them in place even if the glue fails slightly in a few places.
Repeat this until there are at least four staples at different locations on the base. We used five on each cuff, making sure to staple near the ends of the base, where the feathers are most likely to slip off the end of the fringe’s thread.

Do not worry that the staples will be visible from the outside. The downy parts of the feathers do a good job of concealing them, even if the feathers are fairly dark in colour.

2. Once you are sure the glue has had time to set up (at least 10 minutes to get a good strong bond) and AFTER you have applied these last staples,
stand the cuffs upright so that the fluffy parts of the feathers are upward, and the quills are downward.

Now is when you finally cinch the ribbon. Pull it through the hole until it is absolutely as tiiiight as it will possibly go, and if you have to, use a weight on the free tail of the ribbon to keep the cuff standing upright.

This is your opportunity to see the cuffs in a ‘natural’ state for the first time.
Now, if you want, add any additional accent feathers you intend to add. The way the feathers stand now is how they will stand while you are wearing them.
This is also the time when the glue will finish drying.

Once you are satisfied with how the cuffs look, LEAVE THEM ALONE EXACTLY AS THEY ARE, STANDING UPRIGHT.
Leave them there for the next 15 minutes; the free air currents will harden the glue to the point where the cuffs will be wearable, now.

3. Loosen the ribbons on the cuffs, slide them onto your ankles as you intend to wear them, cinch the ribbon (or tie it, if necessary) to the length that keeps them on but doesn’t harm your ankle by friction or tightness… and go give them a test drive! ^_^



FOLLOW UP:
If you find that you are walking on the feathers, go back with knife or scissors and pare the feathers that are too long.

If you don’t want to cut any feathers, your other option to avoid damaging them while wearing them is to move them higher on your leg, away from where you could tread on them.

If your ribbon starts to get frayed on the end, dip the end in tacky glue and let it air dry. This will harden the ends of the ribbon so they won’t fray.

If any of the staples manage to bite you, go back with pliers and either remove the offending staples or press them down tightly into place. Once this is done, a cotton ball can be glued over the top of the staple, and it won’t trouble you any more.

If you decide to trim the ribbons shorter, make sure you always leave enough length that you can slide the cuffs on and off WITHOUT PULLING THE RIBBON OUT OF THE HOLE. If you have to feed it back through the hole, you will be at risk of damaging or pulling off some feathers unintentionally.

You can let the ribbons hang free, or you can tuck them into any shoes or moccasins you might be wearing. You can also feed them back between your cuff and your ankle; the feathers will cover them enough to conceal them.

YOU DO NOT WANT feathers on the very back of your ankle; this is a surefire way to step on them and cause damage to them. Additionally, it will hamper your ability to move your foot naturally. The gap at the back of the cuff is INTENDED to be there, to provide freedom of motion and no feathers to step on.

This entire project can also be done with fur trimmed to intended lengths and widths.

END TUTORIAL.
Feel free to ask questions or post comments, as you please.