Hello! it's Esther from estieMade, with the fourth installment of Craft Blast from the Past. This series is all about taking an old school craft and using it in a new and modern way.
The focus today is embroidery thread. Many of us (especially girls!) grew up making friendship bracelets and anklets with this stuff. There were a million-and-one ways to tie the brightly colored strings to make various kinds of bracelets.
Now that we've grown out of making friendship bracelets, why not use that to wrap some pens? I found this wrapped feather pen tutorial from idlewife, and was inspired to make my own.
Don't know about you, but I still had some floss left over from middle school at my parents' house. The feathers were purchased from Joann Fabrics a long time back. And the pens were spare ones from our drawer. So this was essentially a $0 craft.steps /1/ Start by taking the gel pen cartridge from the casing. Measure your embroidery thread, making sure you have a long tail (it's better to have more than less!)
/2/ Check to see how the end of your feather fits into the pen cartridge. The feathers I used had ends that were taped with masking tape, which allowed the feather to fit snugly into the cartridge. If your feather end is too thin (i.e. falls into the cartridge), wrap the ends with a small bit of masking tape.
/3/ Tie one end of the embroidery thread around the taped end. Then put fabric or tacky glue all over the taped area, and insert feather into pen cartridge./4/ Start wrapping the pen, using the basic friendship knot. You'll want to work towards the pen tip.
Idlewife has this great "how to" video for how to do the wrapping:
To change colors, use the existing color to tie a knot to the new colored thread. Hold the old color close to the pen and wrap the new color around both pen and old color.
/5/ When you've reached the tip of the pen, bind off the thread. You can add a little dab of glue to the ends and secure it to the pen.
And you're done! What can you use your feather pen for? I think it'd look neat for signing a guest book at a wedding. Or perhaps for party favors. Maybe they could be just to spruce up your cubicle at work. The sky's the limit on this one!
Hope you will join us at our Craft Party for more DIY fun!