Red-Tail Designs

Cooling their heels: Moccasins dry on fence posts, readying for another day of dancing.

Is it really Friday already? Nearly 11 p.m.? Where did this week go?

Fancy shawl dancers.

I’ve been meaning to post photos from last weekend’s Powwow all week and this is the first moment I had. I’ll keep it short on words, long on photos.

I will say it was a gorgeous weekend. Usually during the August Festival we’re sweating our feathers off but it was sunny, breezy and downright September-like on a wonderful August day.

Susan from Heart to Hearth explains the Roasting Corn Festival traditions.

Dennis scraps a deer hide, readying it for brain tanning.

Dancer from the Spring Powwow

The August Powwow at the Museum of Indian Culture snuck up on me! It’s next weekend.

Thoughts of quilling turtles and birds got me up the hills on my 4-mile run the other day. Hopefully I’ll have time this week to put those ideas down on leather.

Visit the tipi in the LifeWays area.

If you haven’t any plans for these beautiful days of summer, come on by and see Native American Indians show off their regalia and dancing skills. The Powwow runs from 10:30 a.m. until 6 p.m. on both Saturday and Sunday, August 16 and 17. Dancing doesn’t start until after opening ceremonies at noon. Then chow on a buffalo burger or Lakota taco. Yum!

I’ll be in the LifeWays area, demonstrating porcupine quillwork and selling my quill and horse hair jewerly. If you’re thinking of getting horse hair jewelry made, come on by with your tail. I can show you the styles in person.

Speaking of horse hair, I have a new Horse Hair Bracelet class coming up at Out of Our Hands on September 21, 2008. The class will last from noon to 2:30 p.m. and you’ll walk away with a horse hair bracelet you created with your own hands.

Porcupine quill plaiting technique.

On September 20 I’ll be teaching Quillworking at the Museum of Indian Culture. Quillwork Part 1 will go from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. and Quillworking Part 2 will be 5:30 p.m. to 8 p.m.

See the events page for more details.

Hope to see you next weekend!

At the torch with tiny wire and my nemesis the copper earring.

I was back at the torch bright and early determined to leave the class with a pair of leaf earrings. I cut new patterns, sent them through the rolling machine, grinded, sanded, annealed (that’s metal-talk for heated with a torch), bended, annealed, bended again and welded the rod on.

Annealed copper leaves.

Leaf cut outs and the earring goofs from Saturday.

Sending the leaf cutouts through the roller to get the shape.

That was the easy part.

See where I have that tiny little rod in my hand? I had to heat and bend that without melting it in half.

My pièce de résistance for the weekend: the leaf copper earrings. I liked the unpolished look, even though one has purple bands. The purple will eventually fade.

Doug Salmon, the instructor, was very up front with us on the first day: “I’m going to show you the hardest way to do things, so that from now on any other skill will be much easier to do.” He wasn’t kidding. This was hard.

Instructor Doug Salmon helps a student.

An hour and 2 goofed earrings later, I had a fairly close match to my first earring. (Not to worry, the goofed earrings will be pendants.)

The thing about this, I realize, is that sheer determination will not yield results with this kind of work. Determination will get you to try again and mess up another 26 earrings, but only skill and learning to do it right will get you to create with this medium.

Doug is offering the next level class at his studio at Spruce Forest next month and I highly recommend his classes. He has a sense of humor, he isn’t afraid to let you burn up a bit of brass and he tells you there are more ways than his to metalsmith.

I am definitely not a stellar welder, but after this weekend I left with a some jangly jewelry, dirt under my fingernails, a bit of soot on my face and great big smile.

This is Wenda, modeling horse hair earrings. She made them on Sunday at Out of Our Hands during the Horse Hair Earring Class.

Wenda brought some of her beloved Opie’s tail to class. She cleaned the hair ahead of time and was ready for braiding as soon as she walked in the door.

We had a great time at the class, braiding and gluing, chatting and creating. Wenda walked away with a momento of her favorite horse and can tell everyone, “I made these myself!”

If you’re interested in attending upcoming classes Horse Hair Earrings or Horse Hair Bracelets, contact me or Out of Our Hands. We’re putting together dates for these two classes now. All supplies are included, but you can bring your own horse hair if you choose.

Not everyone is so crafty or has the time, so I create horse hair earrings and bracelets for others, as well. Head over to the Horse Hair Jewelry page to find out more.

Out Of Our Hands is sponsoring a new class in July: Horse Hair Earrings!

As you saw in a previous post, we had a great time learning how to make porcupine quill earrings. You get to see what goes into creating something by hand, plus you go home with a new piece of jewelry.

Here are the details:

Horse Hair Earring Class

Sunday, July 13 from noon to 2 p.m.

at Out Of Our Hands, Emmaus, PA

Class Fee: $45

Please contact me or Out of Our Hands at 610-965-4806 to register.

While we’re on the subject of horse hair, click out the Horse Hair Jewelry tab along the top of the page. I finally added the horse hair earrings to the page so they are available for custom ordering.

Also notice the changes in the product descriptions. Each product is named after a horse I’ve known during my life. In the future I hope to include photos of each of these horses, but given some of them are steeds I met 20-some years ago, I have to do some digging to do.

Remember the days of film cameras? Push the button, advance the film BY HAND. Then wait ages, no eons for the film to get developed and sent back to you in the mail (the anticipation alone, made me stare down the mailbox for days). Then, the big question: are the photos good…no heads cut off or blurriness.

Yup, those were the days before digital cameras and many of my four-legged friends were captured this way. So after I wade through that huge box, I hope to add those critters to the site.

In the meantime, enjoy your summer. I know I am!

The first day of June saw four friends come away from Out of Our Hands with handcrafted pairs of porcupine quill earrings. Above, Melanie and Ann Marie work on gluing and adding the ear wires.

I taught a Porcupine Quill Jewelry Workshop at the Emmaus, PA, store on Sunday, the first of many workshops to come at Out of Our Hands.

Each lady created a unique version of my single quill earrings with stone chips. We had a lot of laughs and learned a little about porcupines and porcupine quillwork while chatting about growing up in the area. Two of the women and I graduated from the same high school. We’re amazed that Emmaus has turned from the “boring” town of our youth to a quaint little place the people come to visit!

Shannon knots the thread before adding ear wires.

Coryn threads the needle for one last pass through the beads.

The women had such a blast, they want to take the horse hair earring class. I will be offering a Horse Hair Earring class at Out of Our Hands, as well, hopefully in July. If you’re interested in learning how to make horse hair earrings, contact me or Out of Our Hands to sign up. I’ll post more about the dates and times as the information becomes available. Click on my events page to find out more.

You have a chance to learn how to make these porcupine quill earrings.

Out of Our Hands will be sponsoring my Porcupine Quill Earring Class on Sunday, June 1 from noon to 2 p.m. The class costs $40 and all supplies are included. You’ll come away from the class with a pair of earrings made with porcupine quills, silver or gold-plated earwires and semi-precious stone chips. Amethyst chips are featured above, but you can also choose from peridot (green), citirine (yellow) or aquamarine (blue).

Classes like this give artists and customers a chance to meet and chat. I get a greater understanding of how the rest of world sees my pieces. The results are sometimes very surprising. Customers get a glimpse of the creative process and working with the materials, giving them a greater appreciation for handmade items.

So come join the fun. Space is limited, so sign up soon with Out of Our Hands, Emmaus, PA, by contacting OOOH@ptd.net or 610-965-4806.

In other news, my Vanilla blog post is featured on The Crafty Crow today. This fun site is tagged “a children’s craft collective.” Created by Cassi of Bella Dia as a way to wrangle interesting kids crafts from all over the Internet, it’s a great resource if you’re stumped on how to keep the wee ones busy today.

Making vanilla gets kids involved in cooking at the very beginning of the process and helps them see that all ingredients come from somewhere, not just the store.

The vanilla beans went into the bottle almost 6 weeks ago. Today the liquid is the color of strong tea, a beautiful golden brown, but it still has a mightty vodka bite, so it needs a little more time. Visuals on that to come, as my husband just walked out the door with the camera.

Check out Crafty Crow’s other posts for the day, too, and have a great Memorial Day weekend!

What a great way to celebrate spring that with a festival! I spent the weekend at the Museum of Indian Culture’s Spring Corn Festival. Some highlights:

Lots of dancing by native peoples in regalia. Head Dancer Robert SilentThunder performs a special dance in honor of the Museum of Indian Culture.

The turtle I worked on the last few weeks found a happy, new home.

Two of the teaching tipis.

My little pink with her uncle, learning to throw the atlatl, an ancient hunting weapon.

Yes that’s me wearing gloves while demonstrating quillwork at my booth. Saturday was overcast and the breeze blowing off the Lehigh River was c-c-c-cold. Sunday was sunny and gorgeous.

The turtle has arrived!

He’s a bit flashier than I imagined, with the white around his shell, but that’s okay. This is my first quillwork turtle (that looks like a turtle), so he should be flashy. My projects usually don’t turn out exactly as drawn/imagined because I try to go with the flow. Although I drew a sketch for the turtle, I didn’t outline the design on leather. I usually freehand the whole thing right there as I’m quilling. Sometimes that works and sometimes that doesn’t.

I’d say it worked this time.

The turtle is done–he looks like he’s going to crawl right off the leather, doesn’t he?– but I still have to whip this into shape with leather tie, leather backing and quilled border. I have a few days left before the Powwow. Pressure is a wonderful thing.

While quills soak and soften, I pull together other porcupine quill pieces.

My tradition-style of porcupine quill earrings on the right; on the left are some new ones I envisioned in the middle of a bead store this past weekend. They are more stunning than they appear in the photo.

Friends and I checked out Beadnik in West Chester, PA (along with a fabulous dinner at Vincents and coffee/gelato/pastries at Sprazzo. We should have gone to Sprazzo first. Life is really too short to save incredible desserts for last).

I’m sure I’ve seen these silver tubes before since they’re among the many silver beads made by the Karen Hills Tribe in northern Thailand. I love Tribal Hills Silver and order it whenever I have money burning a hole in my pocket. But there in the bead store, these two little tubes spoke to me.

I have visions like that in bead stores.

In fact, I often have a take a deep breath and remind myself to focus when I go into a bead store. I get very distracted by, “Wow, I could pair this bead with that bead and have and fantabulous new thing.” Too many dollars later I have more beads to take up space alongside the other fantabulous beads I purchased before. This year, I’m aiming to use all those beads in projects so by year’s end my bead boxes are empty and I’ll have to buy new stuff. Then again, don’t all of us collectors-of-inspirational-bits-n-pieces dream of burning through our stash? If only we had enough hours in the day.

It’s time to get back to quillworking. May 3 and 4 the Museum of Indian Culture will host the first of its three annual powwows, the Spring Planting Corn Festival. For the past several years I have demonstrated porcupine quillwork at the powwow. The next week will be dedicated to whipping up last minute things for my booth.

One of the volunteers last year requested I make a turtle hair tie. Above are the sketches for different ideas. The frist layer of shell is done in porcupine quills dyed yellow using a line technique. Around that I straight stitched quills dyed black.

Can you see the turtle emerging? Next I’ll outline the shell and add his legs, head and tail in red and white. Red, white, black and yellow tend to be very traditional colors among several different Native American Indian nations. That’s going to be new colors and different stitch, so I need to sleep on it first.

My original plan for the turtle didn’t work out. I tried a complicated technique called a multiquill plait, thinking I could use a several dyed quills and end up with a woven round shape.

It didn’t pan out, but I ended up with this neat flower shape. So I’ll add a stem and some other embellishments and maybe turn it into a pendant.