I created this feather headdress from three different types of feathers; Ostrich, Rooster and albino Peacock. They are all prepped and attached to one drilled & twisted hairpin to create an Edwardian or early 20s evening headdress.
Here is what it took; 5 white Coque feathers, two trimmed ostrich drabs feathers, two burnt Ostrich feathers, one albino Peacock feather, florist wire, black and white silk embroidery ribbon, heavy sewing thread, some black enamel paint and one long twisted hairpin with 4 holes.
The two triangle ostrich feathers were made by stripping most all of the barbs from the stem and then trimming the remaining barbs near the tip into this triangle (arrow) shape.
I describe how to burn feathers in this article.
Every feather has a length of florist wire wrapped around the base of the stem and extending below the feather about 1.5″. The wire is thick enough to support the feather.
The wire is wrapped with ribbon that is glued to the wire and then wrapped up to cover the wrapped wire on the base of the stem then glued again.
Two of the black feathers have issues with the stem that need to be fixed. The burnt ostrich feather had some voids in the color along the front of the stem and the arrow feather has a white strip along both sides of the feather where the barbs were stripped away.
The fix is best done with black enamel paint. I have used black fingernail polish but model paint is cheeper.
I painted the stems.
And set the aside to dry.
Now I twisted the wires so that I had a set of two feather in every bundle. They should be twisted to the closest feather to them that will be in the final headdress.
This is what they looked like at that point.
I covered the twists with ribbon.
This is what the white bundle of 6 feathers looked like, it is made of three of the two feather bundles. Note: even though they are bundled together each feather can be moved and rotated into position. This is important for the final look of the headdress. Notice that the shortest coque feather is to the left the the next two shortest the the longest coque and the Peacock.
The black is added in front of the white and the thin wires were folded to the back. This is covered with some wider black ribbon which was glued and sewed into place.
The ribbon base was sewn to the hairpin thru all 4 holes.
