Free dream catcher SVG files

What a dream catcher is

The dream catcher comes from the Ojibwe people of North America, who hung a small willow hoop strung with a web over a child’s cradle. In the story, bad dreams are caught in the web and good ones slip through the eye in the middle and down the feathers to the sleeper. The designs here are our own drawings of the general form, not copies of any maker’s work.

A real web is made from one thread. Each round is knotted to the middle of every span in the round before, which is why the knots step half a place round as the web closes in, and why there is always a small open eye at the centre.

Cutting fine webs and feathers

These are tall, lacy designs, so size matters. At 100 mm tall the web threads are about 1.7 mm wide, which cuts in vinyl with a sharp blade and weeds well if you work from the centre of the web outwards. For iron-on, 120 mm or taller is more comfortable. For wood or acrylic on a laser, 150 mm or taller keeps the threads strong; the simple dream catcher has the heaviest lines and can go smaller.

Each feather has a slit along its shaft and a few splits in its edges. On card these can be left as score lines. The loop at the top is a real hole: use it for a cord, a keyring or an earring hook.

How to open the files

• Cricut Design Space: choose Upload, pick the SVG, and add it to the canvas. Set the width you want; the shape is already welded.
• Silhouette Studio: Designer Edition and above open the SVG. The free Basic Edition does not, so open the DXF instead.
• LightBurn, xTool Creative Space and Glowforge: import the SVG, then set the layer to cut, score or engrave.
• Inkscape, Illustrator and Affinity: open the SVG. It is a plain filled path, so you can recolour it, add a stroke or combine it with your own work.
• Printing or sublimation: use the PNG, which has a transparent background.

Each design page lists the file’s narrowest part at seven sizes, so you can tell whether it will survive at the size you plan to cut.

Questions