I got this ornament in a batch of vintage feathers. I had never seen anything quite like it. I think the feathers are Turkey wing feathers but it would be difficult to reproduce not days because all the Turkey feathers you can buy do not include the tip of the feather. Because the feathers are a by-product of Turkeys for food and they are raised in large groups the feathers get worn at the tips. All the wing feathers are trimmed back to look neater. I did use some Goose wing feathers to give the techniques a try.
The ornament is made up of three curled feathers held together with a metallic band almost like a ring but with just enough room for the base of the feathers.
I did not have any perfect Turkey feathers to give the curling a try so but I did have some Goose wing tip feathers to experiment with.
These came from this Goose wing tip near the joint. They are not 100% symmetrical side to side but close. I checked you can order Goose Favions feathers that are very similar but only 6-9″ long not 12″ or so long.
I used a table knife to dent the stem of the Goose feathers. I had to do it several times but I did get it to curl. It took lots of denting to get them to curl. I think that soaking the feathers in warm water for an hour or so to get them to soften would have helped.
The middle feather was a little ragged so I did some careful trimming on the outside edge. As the ornament was in fairly good shape except for the base of the feathers and the jewelry I chose to focus on that.
I set to fixing the vintage piece by replacing the stones. There were only three of the ten stones left. They were clear but I chose blue and popped out the old rhinestones with a needle. Then glued the new crystals in with E-6000.
Much better.
Now for the base of the stems. I painted them with black fingernail polish. I could have also used enamel paint. You can get small bottles in craft stores for models. Fingernail paint or enamel paints work really well to repair feather stems, when they dry it looks just like the undamaged part of the stems.