Assembling a doll's wig

My poor little lady that needs a new hair doo. What's a doll maker to do?
Well, we continue to make a new wig! That's what a doll maker's to do. Removing her old wig wasn't that hard, it was held by a few more staples and no glue, the only thing I had to do was to be careful of her composition. I left a few staples that weren't holding the wig in place, I figured they would serve as a marker to the edge of the wig and would be concealed anyway.

I prepared and rinsed 5 bundles of mohair, as you can tell by her old wig, the top of her head is anchored rather than parted. I made sure I had some longer lengths in order to flip it over and create this flat area.

Here she is bald...and still dirty, but holding the secret weapon, Madame's old tights.

The foot of the tights are cut of and will double as the base of the wig, neat huh?

Generally I use scotch tape to adhere the hair to the stocking but in this case it's best to double side the wide tape and place it over the loose hair and run it all through the machine. Scotch tape over yarn wigs works well, it will hold all the strands together and is forgiving when stretching the stocking as you stitch along, a wig is expandable and needs to stretch, if you don't pull the stocking while sewing, it will bind tight. However you can not remove scotch tape from this kind of fiber with out pulling it to much. A smooth surface will keep the fiber moving through the machine.

And of course you reach the stage where it becomes comber sum. In this case she had a circle of stitched hair over the crown, the two for the "part" and a horseshoe shape on the edge of the stocking. I started with the difficult, the crown. By the time I stitch the edge I was a professional at it!

Another rinse and a another hang to dry,

on to the dyeing. C&G Design