Fun with porcupine quills

[Alberto]

A friend from work gave me a ziploc bag with a bunch of porcupine quills and guard hairs. Now that they have been cleaned I was finally able to sit at my bench and play around with what is a new material to me. I will still keep them quarantined from the rest of my materials - I do this with all harvested materials.

Here is a mayfly pattern - I kept the quill in its natural color. The tails are porcupine guard hairs which were threaded through the quill. Looking at this photo I could have done a better job selecting partridge feathers for the wings - those are a bit ragged.



The second fly is a damselfly. This is a Harrison Steeves pattern in which I changed the body material from Kreinik braid to a porcupine quill and I also added some legs to the pattern. One thing I noticed is that the quills don't take permanent marker well, even after a 1 hour dry time the blue ink was still coming off on my hands. Anybody knows of a way to fix the color on the porcupine quills?



I hope you like the patterns. I need to think of other ways to incorporate the quills into other flies.

Alberto

[Ron Eagle Elk]

Alberto,

The quills have a waxy outer coating to them. My wife dyes them for her quill weaving and plaiting. Before coloring them she washes them in hot water and dish soap with a couple drops of bleach. They will get soft, but still watch out for the pointy end. Once they are washed and rinsed well, air dry them, making sure they are separated well and turned often so they don't mold. Sounds like a lot of trouble, but the colors she gets are well worth it.

REE

[Alberto]

Ron, you mentioned that the quills get soft after being washed. Do they stay soft or do they get back to their original state once they dry out?

[Ron Eagle Elk]

Once they dry they are back to their original hard state. When plaiting or wrapping quills, women would keep a few in their mouth to keep them soft and workable. VEE keeps hers in a damp paper towel instead.

REE

[onemorecast]

Great thread! Now I have some ideas for the thick quills. I was only tying with the guard hairs flattened and wrapped as abdomens. The only other use I could think of for the white quills was coffin fly bodies. Why didn't I think of dying them? Oh well, I guess that's why I have internet forums!