Tutorial - Awesomely Luxurious Doll Hair

How do you make good dolls hair? It's something that I've been experimenting with for a while, trying different things and the other day I re-discovered an awesome way to do it. Weirdly enough it was something I first used in about year 7 to make a judges wig from carpet strands. But now, with a little more thought, it works beautifully for dolls hair.

To your left is a doll I made for my niece for Christmas. She's a big fan of pink, so that was the theme of the doll. She's a smaller version of the portrait dolls I've been sewing recently, and she came out really well I thought. Plus, my neice loved her. There's nothing better than a personal present that goes down really well. Makes the heart sing.

So without further ado, here is a tutorial for Awesomely Luxurious Doll Hair!


You'll need:
Yarn in various colours*
sewing needle
thread
scissors

*I've found that the hair looks better if you use more than one colour, or shade of the chosen colour. For this doll I wanted pink hair, so I used all my shades of pink - 2 pale pinks, a bright pink, a dark pink and a fluffy light pink yarn too. It makes a more interesting visual than a single plain colour.

Step one: Measure one strand of yarn across the bottom of the dolls head near the neck (we'll call this the WIG STRAND). You want the WIG STRAND to be long enough to trail down both sides of the head longer than you picture the finished hair. Tie a knot in the WIG STRAND at either side of the head so you'll know where to tie the hair on.

Step two: Cut a number of HAIR STRANDS of yarn of different colours double the length you want the doll's hair to be, and start tying them in between the two knots on the WIG STRAND. A single knot is sufficiant as you'll be stitching them tightly in a minute.

Step three: once there's a good number of yarn HAIR STRANDS tied to the WIG STRAND (see above photo), stretch the WIG STRAND back across the dolls head. Stitch the WIG STRAND to the doll's head, making sure that you stitch through each knot to ensure they don't unravel in the future.
Step four: Continue making and stitching WIG STRANDS until the dolls head is as covered as you want it to be.

Step five: When you come to stitching the final WIG STRAND on the head, place it with the strands falling over the face rather than falling across the previous hair and stitch it on.
Then smooth the hair away from the face. This ensures that the knots and the WIG STRAND cannot be seen from the front of the doll.

Step six: give your doll a hair cut, cutting the strands to the length you want. To ensure you don't end up with a weird looking straight line, gather the hair into a horizontal line and cut across the ends. Then when you let it go, the hair will fall and look better than a straight line

And that's it. Your doll's coiffure is done! Long, thick luxurious hair that any doll would be proud of.


You can put this hair up in a pony tail, but it is quite thick (it can look a little like a ponytail of dreadlocks) so if you want your doll to have her hair up, you could try making the WIG STRANDS spiral around the head instead of straight across it, and leave the middle of the head bald. You wont be able to see it when the hair is up, and that will eliminate some of the bulk

Go forth and hair my children!