Creating a Dreamcatcher, a Fantastic DIY Project

I have always admired dreamcatchers. They are beautiful works of art that can be highly personalized with beads, feathers, and colors. But, I have never made one before! It’s a project that I always thought would be pretty complicated. However, since I have started making it a priority to try something new every month I have found that I’m more willing to give different DIY projects a try! Most of the time I find that they’re not as difficult as I first thought and creating a dreamcatcher is no exception!

Learn Something New With Kristin

Feature 15 – Creating a Dreamcatcher.

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What Is a Dreamcatcher?

Historically dreamcatchers originated with First Nations people and were given to children with the intention of protecting them while they slept. Dreamcatchers were thought to trap evil spirits that came in the form of nightmares. When the sun rose in the morning the bad spirits would dissolve and the person would awaken refreshed and happy!

Dreamcatchers now come in a variety of shapes and designs. While they might have moved away from the traditional materials used they have seen a popularity rise with crafters due to their attractive design, ability to be personalized and relatively low cost of materials.

What Do You Need when Creating a Dreamcatcher?

As stated above, Dreamcatchers are a craft that can be highly personalized. While some materials might be swapped out or changed the most basic materials are :

• A Metal or Wooden Hoop
• Feathers or Beads (or both)
• Some sort of string

Since I wasn’t entirely sure how I wanted to make my dreamcatcher I decided to order a kit off of Amazon. It seemed easier than trying to source, measure and figure out all the materials separately and gave me plenty of color and design options. However, I’m pretty sure that with a bit of creativity you could probably get everything you needed from a dollar store too!

How Do You Make a Dreamcatcher?

I wasn’t sure exactly how to start this process but I did know I wanted to make a moon-shaped dreamcatcher. I watched a variety of youtube videos on the subject including this one, which was very helpful, although I ultimately changed my design a little bit.

The basic steps to dreamcatcher creation seem to be pretty similar however, regardless of design and I found that having some prior knowledge from our Macrame wall hanging project was very useful!

Creating a Dreamcatcher – Step One

Choose a material and start wrapping it around your hoop. You can choose to tie or glue it to the frame to start but I have seen various materials used. Everything from yard, ribbon or leather strips seems to be a viable option. My kit came with a variety of leather strips so that’s what I used.

Since I wanted to make a moon-shaped dreamcatcher I also wrapped a smaller second hoop and attached it to the first.

Creating a Dreamcatcher – Step Two

Once your hoop has been wrapped its time to start creating your web. This is the step I thought would be the most complicated. Thankfully it is not as bad as it seems! In practice, all you need to do is make a series of loops around the outside of your form and then repeat it moving inwards. To keep your loops anchored in place wrap your material around the outside of your hoop and then bring your string around and through the original loop. Think like you are creating a series of slip knots.

For my dreamcatcher, I used some more leather strips in a different color. While they did work the end result is a bit chunkier then I would have liked! I think it would have been fine with a larger hoop too. But! Learning something new is sometimes about showing imperfection – and the next time I make a smaller dreamcatcher like this one I will likely use thread or yarn instead. Keep this in mind when designing your own!

Creating a Dreamcatcher – Step 3

With your web completed its time to add some decorations. For this simple dreamcatcher, I choose to create a fringe using more leather strips. To create the fringe I attached the strips to my hoop using the same method we used in our Macrame project.

Once I was happy with the fringe I added a couple of feathers! If I had chosen to make a larger dreamcather I might have added some bead but for my first project, I picked a smaller design and didn’t want to make it look cluttered. For future projects, I plan to string beads throughout the webbing and more feathers along the fringe!

End Result

While I am pretty pleased with my first dreamcatcher I admit that there is room for improvement. That is half the fun of learning new skills, however! In the future, I will probably create the webbing with thinner material and use larger hoops! Like all crafting projects, I expect that creating these will become easier with practice but now that I know the basics I can only improve!

Overall this was a fairly easy project to complete and I think it would be suitable for pretty much everyone, including older children! If you wanted to make it friendlier for smaller children then you might consider using a lace doily for the webbing, which might be too frustrating for them to otherwise craft.