Cattail twists.

Sharing on of mom's favorite kid things for this time of year.  Cattail twists for additions to bouquets and table decorations.  Cattails are borderline too young for it to work best right now.   It will work for about the next month with prime season for it starting tail end of July at least in this area.

1.  Harvest a plain cattail.   Best is if it can be done immediately after harvest.  If not put its stem in water to keep it moist for a few hours till you can do it.  You will make more mistakes and fewer successes the longer it is from being cut.

2.  Using a smooth table knife held perpendicular scrape the brown off in long stripes up the cattail.  

3.  Color the paler scraped areas with a crayon or marker.  Crayons' color's are typically more durable.  Mostly you will want the really solid colors rather than paler or pastel  Markers typically show better short term and crayons fade slower

4.  Twist the cattail back and forth  working from one end to the other to create patterns in the stripes.  This is the fun kid part as blowing a few up doing this is virtually guaranteed.  Also means it is an outdoor activity typically.  

5.  If using for table decorations spray the cattail down heavily with hairspray to help keep it from blowing up some later day.  No matter how good you do some will fail as they dry or as humidity changes.

You will find by changing how you grip and how you let fingers slide you can make square waves, triangular waves and sinusiods in the pattern. You can even mix patterns. One of the old bouquets has one in it that was done 30+ years ago so with care and luck they can last. But mostly this is a kids throw away project. You do them, use them for the event and compost them. (of course you need to blow them up into fuzz before composting.)

Thank you for posting this. During the peak harvest season, if possible, please upload a video of the process?