Transcripts
1. Intro: In this class I will show you two different ways to add flowing hair cells to him embroidery projects. You will learn how to make hair pieces out of yarn, how to create an ombre effect to your hair, a 3D effect with the use of a wadding egg, and last, the rerooting technique where you punch the hair into the fabric. After this course, you will be able to create realistic flowing hair that can be added to an embroidery piece or any other medium. This class is for anyone who's interested in innovative techniques in embroidery.
2. Yarn and fabric: For this project, we are going to work with acrylic yarn. There are many other yarns or wools to choose from. For example, you can use alpaca wool or mohair wool. You can see here in a project that that I use mohair wool. I think it's a great fiber if you want to use it for a doll. But for embroidery, it looks like it's real hair and I do want to avoid that it looks like I cut my own hair. Another major reason why we will use acrylic yarns is because it is cheap. If you look here at Amazon, you will find 22 yarns for $9, which is a great price. I want to give some advice on the fabrics I use in this class. The first fabric that I use is Debian silk. It's thick fabric and I like the way it looks, but it's expensive and not suitable for rerooting methods. But for the wig method, it is perfect, but any fabric is suitable for the wig methods. For the rerooting method, it is best to have cotton fabric. That is the easiest to get the rerooting needle through.
3. Making the hairpieces: In this part, we are going to make the yarn into hair. You can use anything to attach the yarn. I use an embroidery hoop because that is what I have laying around, but you can use anything that is heat resistant. Take a piece of yarn and hold the ends to create a loop that will keep the yarn into place. Then you take a string of yarn and untangle it by twisting it. Now we have a nice piece of fluffy yarn to work with. Make sure you make enough, because when we brush it out a lot will come off. For the brushing part, you will need a brush, and I highly recommend using a pet brush. Gently tap in the yarn and hold the fibers in place. Yes, unfortunately you will lose a lot of yarn with brushing. You can prevent this by making the strings of yarn shorter. I purposely made the strings of yarn too long so I can show you how to fix this problem later on. This is what it looks like when it's all brushed out, and now it's time for us to add some color to create a really nice ombre effect. A quick way to add an ombre effect is to use pastels. The ones I use are from Talens, and they were €11 for 36 colors. Make sure you have a plastic bag or something to collect the chalk because this will get messy. For this video, I didn't use it, but I recommend using some gloves. I'm going to use a slightly darker shade than the yarn and press it down while moving down on the yarn. You can use a toothbrush or a paint brush to blend it in the yarn. For a silky smooth look, I'm going to use a strainer. Make sure you set it between 150 and 160. If it's too hot, it will melt or look fried. Now go over slowly and pull back the yarn. While I'm doing this, I notice that the hairs are breaking off. This is because I made it too long. Don't worry, just get some scissors and cut it off. Just cut a little bit off of the length so you have more grip of the fibers. Now you see that when it's brushed, much less comes off. I'm also going to reduce some pastels and the tooth brush blending. I'm going to redo the straightening part. You can see that it goes much smoother and almost no hairs are coming off. For the next part, you will need a plastic surface, some scissors, and Mod Podge with a paintbrush. First, you dip your paintbrush in a Mod Podge and make a little line on your plastic surface. Now go ahead and cut off a piece of yarn. Separate the yarn between your fingers and gently put it on the plastic and press on it with your fingers. Take your paintbrush with Mod Podge again, and put a thin layer of Mod Podge on top. Now let it dry for about four hours.
4. Attaching to wadding egg: They are now dry and ready to be taken off. I'm going to show you three different ways to adhere to embroidery. In this first part I'm using a spun cotton egg, but you can also use Styrofoam. This will create a 3D effect, or you can use your hair piece on a different medium. I'm using an egg because it resembles the shape of the head. We are going to cut the egg in half, take a piece of hair, and cut the axis mode patch from the top to make a hair piece neater. I'm using multi glue clear to attach the hair on the egg. Use a little bit and press it onto the egg. You're going to repeat this process until you reach the top of the egg. Your edges will probably look like this and we need to hide them for a nice clean look. We're going to do this with turning your egg around and glue hair pieces on the top. It does not have to look good because you will not see it in the end. Now it's done. I'm now going to take my embroidered piece that I want to attach the head on. You can see that I briefly had a different egg on it and removed it for this one. Put the clear glue on it again and press it down on the embroidery. You can see in the end that the ombre effect is very subtle. You can see how nice the hair plane in and you don't see the edges. The hair is now ready to sell it in any way you would like to.
5. Rerooting: I made an embroidery piece and left the hair section empty and is ready for the rerooting methods. I'm going to use doll hair, I bought the second hand, and I can probably use it for around four pieces. If you search on Etsy, you can find loads of synthetic doll hair. It doesn't have to be a wig, but pieces of hair is even better. I feel horrible cutting this really pretty wig apart, but it was four euros, how can I resist that prize. I'm going to cut of a piece, I'm going to lay it beside me, and I'm going to use little strands of that for the rerooting. You're going to take a little piece of hair, you just have to feel a little bit how much will suite you to use for the tool. You wrap it around your finger really tight, and lay it really flat on your finger, so you can slide it in the tool. I'm going to start with a little piece. Here you see the right way, the needle is long and then you can push it in. This is the wrong way, I made the needle size too short, and now you can see, if it's too short, the needle, hair will fall out. What we're going to do is, I wanted to make a piece from the side, so you can also see a little bit of the eye, a profile, and we're going to go all around that line that you see. We're going to place it really tight again around the finger. There is a lot of item, I'm not really good with the autofocus. Slide it in there, and push it back. You have to wiggle a little bit in the fabric, that you find the right spot to push. You twist it a bit, and then you find the right place to push. Once you get more comfortable with the tool, it's easier for you to get bigger strands of hair. We're going to go all the way round that line of her head. Here you see that I went all the way over the head, and you can see all the little punches I made. It didn't take me that long, it's not something that takes a very long time. You can also do this with embroidery thread or anything you would like to add as hair. We also know when you do the hair line, it also depends on your design, how you want to have it, but I want to have a little less forehead, and I also want to finish her hair line on the front. You can also see that I made a mistake there and I went out, and it's easy also to get back in. Now it's almost finished. I'm just going to add a couple of strands of hair on the front. I'm just going to add an elastic band, it's one of those small elastic bands that you can use for braiding. We're going go to the back. This is what the back looks like, you made little loops. What we're now going to do is we're going to cut that out, we're going to cut them off. You probably see that I wasted a lot of hair, you can make the loops much smaller, but I wanted to do it for video that you can have a good look on how to do it. Maybe get better scissors. These are embroidery scissors, but it doesn't really matter how it looks, it's the back, and we're going to put fabric over it anyway. We're going to go around and gap all the hairs off, then you're going to take your mod podge again, and we're going to glue all the bits of hair flats. You may probably need a couple of layers to do this. I'm going to start with one and let it dry a bit. It's not really that it's necessary that hair hair is attached to the fabric, but it gets hard. That means that if it gets hard, you cannot get it loose from the other side, so it's stuck in there. Try that it doesn't get too messy, but I'm just going to leave it like this, a little bit messy, and then once this is dry, I can cut off the straggly bits. I'm now going to remove a couple of hairs. I wanted to show you something that I did it with another piece, which really saves you a lot of time, but also, it looks nicer. What you can do is you can get a couple of hairs, it's better to use wefts, but this is a quicker solution to get a couple of hair strands, put it between your fingers and get mod podge again. You're slowly going to stroke it over on the fabric and leave it to dry. Once this is dry, you can cover it up on the sides with the rerooting needle. What I did with another piece is, when you use it with the wefts that you made in the first video, it's much easier, all suited out that you make to the wefts and you glue them onto the piece. Here's an example of how I did that. This is from how I did the first video, the first technique. With wefts that you made the little wefts, I attached little wefts in the middle of the head, and on the end, I used the rerooting methods. You won't see in the middle the wefts, but that means that there is more filled in the head, that you won't see any whites.
6. Curling the hair: To curl your yarn buffs, you're going to attach the piece of yarn on a pencil or something else that is heat resistant. Use a tiny clear elastic band to secure it. Now twist the hair around the pencil and use your straightener in the same degrees as you did before and go around the pencil. I'm showing it in slow motion so you can see how it goes. When you move it you can see that you have a perfect curl. Because yarn hair is easily mouldable, you can easily create different hairstyles. Whatever you would like to do, have fun with it and create something different.
7. Thank you: Thank you so much for taking this class. It means so much to me that you take the time out of your day to watch my video. I hope you've all tools you need to create your piece, and if you don't, then please let me know and let me know how I can improve my classes. Thank you so much.
Floor Giebels, Embroidery Artist
