feathers galore

Morning All

so here we are in February, and I was trying to think of some witty title involving February and Feathers, but my brain won't come up with anything this morning, so we will just have to stick with 'feathers galore'.

On Thursday I forgot to share with you how I got on with the feather curling from last week, so I thought I'd do it now.  For anyone new, I got a bag of pheasant feathers from the butcher, well not exactly, they were still attached to the bird's wing, so I had to do a bit of plucking first, and then I had a bag of pheasant feathers.

My goodness working with feathers is messy. In the end I got the vacuum cleaner next to me and sucked up the waste bits on a regular basis.  And did I sneeze? you bet I did, and for a good couple of days afterwards too.  But was it worth it?, ooh yes most definitely, really good fun, very satisfying and some lovely feathers for my hats.

 I tried a couple of methods, but settled on my curling tongs. Now they don't get much use as hair styling products. I do tend to use curlers or rag roll, if I want to style my hair, but they are useful for giving my kiss curl a bit of a lift if I'm in a hurry and don't have time for anything else.  So I was a little dubious to start with in case the feathers left any residue on the curling tongs, I still wanted to be able to use them on my hair, but it was all ok, the curling tongs seemed unaffected by the feathers.

The first stage was to strip the barb off the feather on one side, this was the messy bit. I used a craft knife to get nice and close to the feather's shaft. Then grabbing the top end of the feather in the curling tong I wrapped the feather round, with the cut edge closest to the curling tong.

 

I had some basic black feathers too from a craft shop, they did better with a blunt knife the way that you curl ribbons, but the pheasant feathers were too tough for that method and definitely needed heat, so from now on my curling tongs will spend a lot more time in the sewing room.

And here they are glued on wire ready to be attached to some hats.

And on a hat 

by the way if the hat looks a little funny, the top and the brim are not really attached together just balancing for the photos.

Well that's that, and now I got to nip to the shops before the rain starts (again), but really not complaining we have been a lot lucker that some with the weather, and I do hope that all you out there are warm and dry.

take care till next time.
ally
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