If you’ve found a feather along your path in life and consider it special or sacred in some way, here’s one method of honoring it and keeping it suspended in the air where it belongs. It is always a wonderful practice to begin with a smudging or other cleansing ceremony to prepare both you and the feather. But this article is about actually tying the sacred feather.

Sure, there are dozens of ways to accomplish this, beginning with looping a string around it and hanging it up. But, spiritually speaking, there are other ways of tying it that will honor its existence as a symbol of a messenger that carries our prayers to God. And that is to wrap it in a spiral, just the way the hawks soar.

Here’s an easy method, one of many available. Experiment, and you may find a variation you prefer. I like this one because it allows the formation of a neat spiral without a “rib” running beneath it. That’s because one half of the lacing is “buried” in the center of the quill.

Here’s the way.

First, in addition to your feather, you’ll need a length of leather (or hemp, strong yarn or anything else you like) lacing, a sharp knife or razor blade, a bead and some good general purpose glue. (I prefer to use leather lace and leather glue, shown in this example.) The length of lacing depends on the length of the quill and the diameter of the lacing, but a rough general guideline is to allow four to six inches of lacing per inch of quill. You can use normal string to do a “dry run” and wrap the feather without glue before proceeding, to make sure you know how much lacing you’ll need. Some people prefer to have two ends to tie with once the feather is wrapped, but this requires more lacing. So if you’re budget-minded, you can buy less lacing and have a single end to use. You’ll see what I mean as we progress here.

Choose any sort of bead you like, making sure its hole is just large enough to hold the quill and lacing snugly.

Now we’re ready to start.

Begin by slicing open the quill just below the lower tuft, as shown (left), down to and including slicing through the tip.

Next, fold your lacing in half and place the mid-point of it into the top of the slice, as you see here (right). Work the lacing into the opening for the full length of the slice and out the tip.

Squeeze a small amount of glue along the slice (lower left), making sure some of it penetrates into the crevice while also making a visible line along the entire slice to the tip.

Then, begin tightly wrapping the top half of the lacing around and around the quill in a neat spiral (right). Don’t worry if any glue should ooze up, you can wipe it off in a few minutes.

Once your spiral reaches the tip of the quill, hold it tight while working both ends of the lacing through a bead, then slide the bead up to the tip.

Put a daub of glue into the bead and slide it up and over the tip until it seats snugly inside (left). Add another daub of glue on the bottom of the bead if needed. Tie a knot in the lacing and slide it as close to the bead as possible before tightening. (Note: If you’ve chosen the budget saving way, there may not be enough of one end of lacing to tie a knot. Don’t worry! The glue will hold everything together.)

Wipe off any excess glue with a moist cloth and hang up the finished project to dry. Once dry, you can cut off the short end sticking out of the bead if you chose the budget saving method.

(Note: I’m assuming in this article that you prefer to have a smooth spiral without a rib. In cases where quills can’t be easily sliced and you must put the rib on the outside of the quill, choose a lacing that is rather flat or flexible so that the rib is not so noticeable.)