DIY Feather Thanksgiving Wreath Tutorial

Okay, you guys are going to either really love or hate this Thanksgiving wreath tutorial, but I’m rolling the dice on it anyway!

I have chickens and my dad hunts wild turkeys in season, so I always have a good supply of feathers lying around just begging to be used for some decorating. This isn’t something I would have come up with if I wasn’t trying to figure out what to do with all these feathers I keep accumulating, but I still think it’s pretty neat for fall and Thanksgiving decorating.

This is a really simple wreath make out of the materials you see below:

1.  Straw wreath (foam will work too)
2.  2- 50 packs of greening (floral) pins
3.  3 feet of garden twine
4.  Lots of turkey and chicken feathers in fall colors! You’ll need around 30 turkey tail feathers and a whole bunch of chicken feathers. You can sub smaller turkey feathers instead of chicken feathers if you like; I just used chicken feathers because I have pretty much limitless supply of them!

You can buy feathers online or at craft stores, but they are expensive. If you can find someone who keeps poultry and/or who hunts, you can get them for free or at least cheaper than what you will pay at a store.

Here’s how it all goes together!

Sort out all your feathers according to size and color. If you have only a few of a certain color (like I did with the red feathers in the upper left corner) set them aside for now.

 Tie a loop in the garden twine, wrap it through the wreath, then run the loop through itself.
Pin a turkey feather to the wreath using a floral pin.
Grab a few chicken feathers of an alternating color and pin it over the turkey feather covering its pin.
Keep working around the wreath alternating the size and color of the feathers.

  I found I wasn’t covering up the inside of the wreath as much as I’d like, so I pinned some smaller turkey feathers to the inside. It actually gave it a nice effect!

 I used my mannequin to hold the wreath while I added more big turkey feathers.

 Once you have feathers all the way around the wreath, add those feathers I told you to set aside before evenly around the wreath to add more color and give it a nice balanced visual effect. If you have any spots that are showing pins or just looks bare, add an extra feather or two to fill it in.

 Now you have a feather wreath, perfect for fall and Thanksgiving! Looks great on the front door, don’t you think?

  I hope you enjoyed this tutorial! Let me know what you think, whether you loved it, hated it, or think it’s the funniest thing you’ve ever seen!

Michelle