• Indian Dream Catchers
• Sun Dream Catcher Tattoo
• Sun Moon Dream Catcher Tattoo

Dreamcatchers originated with the Native Americans, became popular with the hippies of the 1960’s and 1970’s, and are now loved by just about everyone everywhere.

Have you heard the story behind the dreamcatchers?

What is a Dream Catcher? A dream catcher is a handmade artifact with a wooden hoop, woven web, and feathers or beads. The common belief is that dream catchers are Native American craftwork that keeps nightmares away. Origin of Dream Catchers. The Ojibwe Nation (also known as the Chippewa) called it the spider web charm or dream snare. The legend is that the spider webs were first created by a woman named Asibikaashi, a mystical spider-woman. In many Native American tribes, a dream catcher is a handmade willow hoop woven to a web or literally, a net. They can include feathers and beads, and they're traditionally suspended on cradles as a form of armor and protection. Dream catchers can be traced back to the Ojibwes.

According to Ojibwe legend, there was a spider woman known as Asibikaashi, who took care of all the children on the land. But as the Ojibwe nation expanded, Asibikaashi wasn’t able to reach all of the children every night. So the mothers and grandmothers crafted dreamcatchers for the children, using willow hoops, natural twine, and feathers. They would then hang the dreamcatchers above the beds of babies and children. These dreamcatchers were thought to filter out the bad dreams, only allowing the good dreams to pass through and reach the minds of the children. When the sun rises in the morning, the bad dreams disappear.

Cute, right?

So when my daughter started getting bad dreams at night, we made her a little DIY dreamcatcher to help her sleep. She is convinced it works, and only has bad dreams when she is sleeping in a different bed without her dreamcatcher. (We may have to make a travel dreamcatcher soon!) She loves hers so much, that we recently made another one for her little sister’s upcoming birthday.

How to Make a DIY Dreamcatcher

These DIY dreamcatchers are quite easy to make, but difficult to explain. The photos will likely help you much more than the written instructions. I have made 4 of these little dreamcatchers, and every one of them has turned out significantly different. I love them all, but couldn’t exactly replicate one if I tried. So embrace the personality of your own little DIY dreamcatcher.

You Will Need:

• 2.5 yards suede lace
• 3 feathers with loop for hanging
• 1 skein embroidery floss
• natural gemstone beads (I used 4mm Amazonite beads)
• optional – big eye needles for threading the beads

A note on choosing gemstones: For this DIY dreamcatcher I chose to use Amazonite, because they are thought to dispel negative feelings, aggravation, worries and fears, and soothe and calm the mind. These properties seem ideal to prevent bad dreams. But you can choose whichever gemstone resonates with you. Other gemstones to use include Amethyst or Selenite, which have soothing and calming properties that help promote sleep.

Instructions:

1. Start wrapping the suede lace around the metal hoop, leaving a tail of about 6 inches at the top of the hoop.
2. Continue wrapping the suede lace around the metal hoop, trying to keep it as tight and close together as possible.
3. Once you get to the end, nestle the suede lace so that there is no metal showing. Both tails should be pointing up.
4. Tie a tight knot at the base of the tails, right at the top of the hoop. Tie another knot at the ends of the tails. This will be used to hang the dreamcatcher.
5. Tie one end of the embroidery floss around the suede lace knot at the top of the dreamcatcher.
6. Bring the embroidery floss around through the inside of the hoop, over the top of the hoop, and back through the loop just made by the embroidery floss. (See the photos for clarification)
7. Continue this motion around the hoop, until you have wrapped it around the hoop 12 times and are back at the top. Keep some slack in the embroidery floss.
8. Do the same thing again around the hoop, but instead of wrapping around the outside of the hoop, you will wrap around the middle of the embroidery floss loop.
9. Keep wrapping around and around, pulling a little tighter with each pass around. Add in the gemstones beads at any point during this process. (Depending on the size of the hole in your gemstone beads, you may need to use a needle to thread them onto the embroidery floss.)
10. Once you have gone around as much as you want, pull the end of the embroidery floss to tighten the web and tie with a secure knot.
11. Thread the embroidery floss through the loops at the top of the feathers. (Or tie them securely if your feathers don’t have loops) The add as many beads and you like on each string.
12. Tie the feathers and beads onto the dreamcatcher loop evenly along the bottom.

Customize Your DIY Dreamcatcher

The customization possibilities for this DIY dreamcatcher are endless. A few of the ways you can customize your dreamcatcher:

• Use a bigger (or smaller) hoop.
• Choose embroidery floss to match the colors in your room (or your baby’s nursery).
• Use a different color natural suede lace.
• Instead of wrapping the embroidery floss around the hoop 12 times (in step 7) wrap it just 8 times.
• Choose natural gemstone beads with properties that resonate with you.
• Add ribbons, yarn, or string to the bottom of the dreamcatcher, instead of or in addition to the feathers.

Make a DIY Dreamcatcher Craft Kit

Sometimes gathering the materials, instructions, and inspiration for a DIY project is too overwhelming. Having everything all wrapped up nicely would be such a nice treat!

Package up all of the materials to make a DIY dreamcatcher in a muslin drawstring bag, add a link to this post, and you have the perfect craft kit gift.

If you like this post, you may also like:

Indian Dream Catchers

In some Native American and First Nations cultures, a dreamcatcher or dream catcher (Ojibwe: asabikeshiinh, the inanimate form of the word for 'spider')^[1] is a handmade willow hoop, on which is woven a net or web. The dreamcatcher may also include sacred items such as certain feathers or beads. Traditionally they are often hung over a cradle as protection.^[2] It originates in Anishinaabe culture as the 'spider web charm' (Anishinaabe: asubakacin 'net-like', White Earth Band; bwaajige ngwaagan 'dream snare', Curve Lake Band^[3]), a hoop with woven string or sinew meant to replicate a spider's web, used as a protective charm for infants.^[2]

Dreamcatchers were adopted in the Pan-Indian Movement of the 1960s and 1970s and gained popularity as a widely marketed 'Native crafts items' in the 1980s. ^[4]

Ojibwe origin[edit]

Ethnographer Frances Densmore in 1929 recorded an Ojibwe legend according to which the 'spiderwebs' protective charms originate with Spider Woman, known as Asibikaashi; who takes care of the children and the people on the land. As the Ojibwe Nation spread to the corners of North America it became difficult for Asibikaashi to reach all the children.^[2] So the mothers and grandmothers weave webs for the children, using willow hoops and sinew, or cordage made from plants. The purpose of these charms is apotropaic and not explicitly connected with dreams:

Even infants were provided with protective charms. Examples of these are the 'spiderwebs' hung on the hoop of a cradle board. In old times this netting was made of nettle fiber. Two spider webs were usually hung on the hoop, and it was said that they 'caught any harm that might be in the air as a spider's web catches and holds whatever comes in contact with it.'^[2]

Basil Johnston, an elder from Neyaashiinigmiing, in his Ojibway Heritage (1976) gives the story of Spider (Ojibwe: asabikeshiinh, 'little net maker') as a trickster figure catching Snake in his web.^{[5][clarification needed]}

Modern uses[edit]

While Dreamcatchers continue to be used in a traditional manner in their communities and cultures of origin, a derivative form of 'dreamcatchers' were also adopted into the Pan-Indian Movement of the 1960s and 1970s as a symbol of unity among the various Native American cultures, or a general symbol of identification with Native American or First Nations cultures.^[4]

The name 'dream catcher' was published in mainstream, non-Native media in the 1970s^[6] and became widely known as a 'Native crafts item' by the 1980s,^[7]by the early 1990s 'one of the most popular and marketable' ones.^[8]

In the course of becoming popular outside the Ojibwe Nation during the Pan-Native movement in the '60s, various types of 'dreamcatchers', many of which bear little resemblance to traditional styles, and that incorporate materials that would not be traditionally used, are now made, exhibited, and sold by New age groups and individuals. Some Native Americans have come to see these 'dreamcatchers' as over-commercialized, like 'sort of the Indian equivalent of a tacky plastic Jesus hanging in your truck,' while others find it a loving tradition or symbol of native unity. ^[4]

Sun Dream Catcher Tattoo

A mounted and framed dreamcatcher is being used as a shared symbol of hope and healing by the Little Thunderbirds Drum and Dance Troupe from the Red Lake Indian Reservation in Minnesota. In recognition of the shared trauma and loss experienced, both at their school during the Red Lake shootings, and by other students who have survived similar school shootings, they have traveled to other schools to meet with students, share songs and stories, and gift them with the dreamcatcher. The dreamcatcher has now been passed from Red Lake to students at Columbine CO, to Sandy Hook CT, to Marysville WA, to Townville SC, to Parkland FL.^[9][10][11]

See also[edit]

References[edit]

1. ^'Free English-Ojibwe dictionary and translator - FREELANG'. www.freelang.net.
2. ^ ^abcdDensmore, Frances (1929, 1979) Chippewa Customs. Minn. Hist. Soc. Press; pg. 113.
3. ^Jim Great Elk Waters, View from the Medicine Lodge (2002), p. 111.
4. ^ ^abc'During the pan-Indian movement in the 60's and 70's, Ojibway dreamcatchers started to get popular in other Native American tribes, even those in disparate places like the Cherokee, Lakota, and Navajo.' 'Native American Dream catchers', Native-Languages
5. ^John Borrows, 'Foreword' to Françoise Dussart, Sylvie Poirier, Entangled Territorialities: Negotiating Indigenous Lands in australia and Canada, University of Toronto Press, 2017.
6. ^'a hoop laced to resemble a cobweb is one of Andrea Petersen's prize possessions. It is a 'dream catcher'—hung over a Chippewa Indian infant's cradle to keep bad dreams from passing through. 'I hope I can help my students become dream catchers,' she says of the 16 children in her class. In a two-room log cabin elementary school on a Chippewa reservation in Grand Portage' The Ladies' Home Journal 94 (1977), p. 14.
7. ^'Audrey Speich will be showing Indian Beading, Birch Bark Work, and Quill Work. She will also demonstrate the making of Dream Catchers and Medicine Bags.' The Society Newsletter (1985), p. 31.
8. ^Terry Lusty (2001). 'Where did the Ojibwe dream catcher come from? Windspeaker - AMMSA'. www.ammsa.com. Sweetgrass; volume 8, issue 4: The Aboriginal Multi-Media Society. p. 19.CS1 maint: location (link)
9. ^Marysville School District receives dreamcatcher given to Columbine survivors By Brandi N. Montreuil, Tulalip News. Posted on November 7, 2014
10. ^'Showing Newtown they're not alone - CNN Video' – via edition.cnn.com.
11. ^Dreamcatcher for school shooting survivors (paywall)

Sun Moon Dream Catcher Tattoo

External links[edit]