Catching Dreams: Finishing Touches for Our Dreamcatcher

Well, a lot did go wrong in this group project. For starters, it’s supposed to be a group effort, but the thing is this dreamcatcher is something that’s too easy for a group project. There are limited tasks to do; that's why naturally the distribution of effort wasn’t divided well—plus, not all of us are artsy, so yeah…the ones with the skill really need to step up.

We are a day away from the deadline, and we’re quite desperate to just have something to show to our professor, and that’s partly the reason why we chose to make this simple dreamcatcher. Assembling the base was tacky yet not that complicated. It certainly needs patience because it took time to cover up the whole wire with thin abaca rope, but with someone assisting me, I did finish it before an hour passed.

With the tacky part done, we proceed to the weaving of the centerpiece, which is opposite to the tacky first step. We finished it before 3:00, and that’s a good sign because I still have time to look for the lacking materials. We don’t have feathers at hand, and since the theme of our project is indigenous, we chose to use the ones that aren’t colored.

And so, I volunteered to bring it home because I’m kinda afraid that they won’t finish it. Finding clean fallen feathers was hard because it just rained that time and our chicken's feathers were soaked. I waited for my father to come home because I know he can help with my feather dilemma. It's almost 6:00 when he came home, and I immediately requested him to pluck some feathers for our dreamcatcher.

It didn’t take much time when I finished the dangling pieces with pearls and feathers. I stick out with the most common pattern, which is I made a balanced pattern with two pearls on the outermost part of the string and then three on the inner part, and the same goes for the feathers.

When I’m finally done with the whole piece, I proceed to the finishing touches, which includes the cutting of the stray threads of the abaca rope. After cutting the prominent ones, I proceed to glue the rest that are still sticking out.

Then I added a circular abaca thread for the holder, which I glue-gunned to the abaca circle. Then tadah! It’s done…but unfortunately, on the day that’s supposed to be the submission, our professor didn’t come. Something came up, and he can’t go to our campus that day, so the submission was moved.

I thought that's a good thing, yet it turned out it wasn’t because the morning before our submission I discovered that a lot of feathers came off! And some of the pearl locations were wonky, so I need to work on them again.

First, I reattached the feathers carefully, which took time because I kept sticking them the wrong way. When I finally figured out how to make it right, I then proceeded to fix the pearls, which I don’t know why took longer that morning.

I painstakingly fixed all that came off, and it’s finally passed nine when I finished them. I sealed the stray threads with the mixture of glue and paint, and when it was done, I hung it to let it dry. It wasn’t the best project I made, but at least it’s not the worst one…and hopefully in the coming Christmas break, I can make some more projects that will turn out decently.

That’s all for now crafters and hope to see you on my coming December projects!