Feather Fan How-to

This fan was made from ~100 (1/4 lb.) 9″ to 12″ ostrich drabs. Laurie Tavan is modeling the fan open and closed and hanging from the wrist tassel cord.

Once I had the shape draw out I taped it to my mat and tapped the tip of a feather to the board.

Then stretched the feather and taped it down.

Untaped it from the board.

This picture is of all the base ends of the feathers, I’m saving them to use for future projects. Most likely some sort of pompom.

All the cut ostrich feathers need to be curled. By pulling the cut feathers along the outside edge of the closed kitchen shear’s blade fairly quickly I was able to curl the feather. The feathers need to be angled upright on their edges. If you want them to curl counterclockwise you need to hold the base in your right hand and use the thumb of your left hand over the feather. If it does not curl enough the first time you can repeat. The outside edge of my shears is narrow but really rounded and not sharp at all.

I started off somewhat backwards. As I learned it is easier to work the front from the left side in sections towards the right. But I started by gluing the feathers to the upper guard then to the section of the leaf to the left of that on the front and then on the back. What I really wanted to learn is just how the fan can open and close with feathers glued to the leaf sections of each rib.

Here is the fan with feathers glued to the upper guard and two rib sections to the left. This is from the front with the fan fully open.

I went back and glued all the feathers on the front side, this time working from the left to the right. I then moved on to adding feathers to the backside which would make the fan look almost done.

This is how it looked like opened up from the front. As you can see it looks a little thin on the upper right.

This is how the fan looked with the feathers added to those three sections.

With this close up of the backside you can see the last three, plus the lower guard (right now it is not glued down but just glued with a dot of glue temporarily) need feathers.

I loosened the tack glue on the guard and moved it out of the way so the last of the feathers could be glued into place. I only added glue in the area that the guard will cover when it is glued back into place. The fold of the fan leaf is wider than the upper guard so any glue on the edges would show.

In many ways this fan is made like the first one. I used 1/4 lb. of strung goose shoulder feathers (more about that later).

First was to make a “wrist tassel set” that would work for both fans and could be moved from one to the other. Wrist tassel sets are the best thing if you are likely to loose your fan at a ball or other evening event. It’s right there on your wrist you can open and use it without taking it off or let it hang from your wrist when not. They appear on fans from the Victorian era on. If you want to see how I make them check out here.

I took a cluster of the goose feathers with me to the paint store to get some paint to color match for my sticks. The paint guy gave me Door & Cabinet paint. When I told him I was painting a fan and that regular satin enamel paint never gets hard enough not to stick to itself when the fan was closed. Very good paint. If you can opt for a sample size jar of paint do it you will not need very much.

Two mistakes I made at this point I figured I could dip the ribs but the paint was too thick and pooled at the bottom. I changed to a brush after that. Second mistake I thought I could remove one rib and still be OK. But that cause trouble down the road.

I painted 3 or 4 coats and when the ribs and guards were really dry I set the rivet and added the “U” ring. I also began the task of curling the Goose shoulder feathers. I have an article on how to curl longer goose shoulder feathers called Nigorie. Which leads me to another mistake I made I should have use Nigorie in stead of coquille which are more curved and shorter. But also more expensive.

I printed and glued my rice paper leaves on to the fan sticks. Another mistake, I talked myself into a very light pink for the leaves but turns out that matching the feather color is best. As you can see this fan is wider In the center than near the guards. So I did have to leave the ribs long and trim then to length after the leaves were glued.

This is how the fan looked when the leaves were glued.

And how it looked when closed.

This time working from the left to the right I was ready to glue feathers on. I made myself a paper templet to use for how many and how much each feather should stick out for every section based on the vintage fan.

This is how it looked with two sections glued. Unlike with the ostrich fan I did not brush on white glue over the section I used Becon’s fabric tac glue and added that just to the stem of the feather where it was going to touch the paper (~last 1/2 to 3/4″).

The same two finished sections from the back,

now I have 4 sections glued on,

here 6.

I switched to gluing the feathers that go under to upper guard.

Then went back to glue the last two sections.

the fan from the side.

Now for the back. I decided it would save time if I organized the feathers into size groups.

I added to smallest ones to the base of the fan from left to right.

This is what that looked like with the fan closed from the back.

And what it looked like from the front.

I continued adding longer and longer feathers to fill in all the sections.

The finished fan from the front.

Because these feathers curl so much I had to fill in the fan sections between sections with ribs and feathers with marabou. I think if I had used Nagorie or even Turkey feathers that do not curl and I had color matched my paper leaves better I might not have had to. I chose not to use turkey flats because most that are sold are shorter and the long ones you can get are expensive. if I make another fan I will search for some and give them a try.