Do you know what tufting is?

Tufting sounds like something you’d do at the gym or while flipping through a parkour course.

"Did you see that guy tufting?"
"Yeah, that was awesome!”

Okay, maybe that's not a conversation you're having with your friends.

Tufting is actually a craft done by First Nations people to make three-dimensional (3D) art and jewellery and to decorate clothing. It was traditionally done by the Dene people in Northwest Territories and the Cree people of northern Alberta and has been done for centuries.

How is tufting done?

First Nations artists use the white hair from the shoulder and rear of a moose and create beautiful designs. The artists — or tufters — collect the hair by plucking it.

Once they’re done collecting it, they sort all of the hair by length, size and colour. The hairs are then tied together in bunches and dyed.

How do they dye the hair?

Traditionally, artists would use things found in nature to dye the moose hair. They would collect plants, roots and berries and make their own dyes with those.

But today, tufters use powdered dyes to create beautiful, vibrant colours. Sometimes, artists leave the hair their natural colour to make more natural designs.

So, they've dyed the hair… now what?

Once the moose hair is coloured, the artist uses a piece of moose hide and draws a design on it by hand. They do this so that every design is unique and not one is the same. The most common designs are flowers and leaves.

Now comes the tricky part. The tufter takes a bunch of about 20 hairs that are the same length, size and colour and bundles them together. They lie them down on the design and draw a thread through the hide and around the bundle near the end. When they draw the thread through the hide tightly, it makes the bundle of hair stand straight up; making a tuft.

The artist repeats this over and over, leaving no space between bundles. When they’ve filled the design they’ve drawn they trim the ends.

Fun fact

Although moose hair is the most common kind of hair used in tufting, artists also use the hair from the beards of caribou.