Wednesday, October 3, 2012

A gift from Victoria

These two wonderful wigs for crochet Bleuette were made by Victoria DiPietro, a most talented dollmaker and generous friend.  



17 comments:

  1. WOW! That is fantastic!! Thanks so much to you and your guest blogger. VERY impressive in deed.

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  2. Many thanks to you, dear Beth, for allowing me to share with all your wonderful blog readers. Everyone is so talented and I love seeing everyone's work!

    Hugs,
    Victoria

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  3. These are AMAZING!!!!!!!!!! I have to make a new Bleuette now so she can have hair like this. I cannot believe how realistic this looks.

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  4. I've really enjoyed watching the development of your Bleuette dolls through your blog!

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  5. LOVELY wigs~! What a talented friend you have~♥

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  6. WOW! Thank you ladies for sharing your wonderful knowledge. I have a question for you. Can you use the commercial weave type hairs that are out to buy for human use now. Or is it better to do the wigs by this fashion because it is still using a yarn?

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    1. I think you could use this technique for any wig making material that has long continuous fibers.

      Beth

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  7. They are so beautiful in their little, soft hair wigs. Love your dolls always.

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  8. Thank ALL of you for your good words on Victoria's lovely wigs and tutorial :-)

    Beth

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  9. Hi Anonymous,

    This is a very good question! The technique I use for making and especially attaching the wefts to the crochet cap is what keeps the Tibetan lamb fibers/locks of hair secure on the cap so that you can comb, style and even get the hair wet without the hairs falling out. If you have another type of weft, say the human hair wefts, the hairs are probably going to be very secure to begin with. So, to answer your question, as long as you cannot pull out the hairs from the weft itself, you shouldn't have any problems using it. Just sew the wefts on the crochet cap by hand using any stitch that will keep the wefts in place.

    Thank you for bringing up this topic!

    Victoria

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  10. I wasn't trying to take away from your technique I think its amazing! I was just thinking it looks similar to the weave hair. Alot of the Sally stores sell different types of hair for $10 a pack, which would probably give you about 5 or so wigs for a doll. Im not sure how expensive the yarn is but I just bought mohair yarn like Beth suggested and it was almost $20. I look forward to your next blog.

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  11. Hi Anonymous,

    Oh, I never thought that at all! I've never tried weave hair, but I know some doll artists use it for wigs. A plate (skin) of Tibetan lamb costs me about $14.50 and I can get two to three wigs from it, depending on the size of the wig I need. The wigs I presented require roughly 65" of weft to make a wig for the crochet Bleuette.

    I agree with you that the weave hair sounds a lot more cost effective, if a person could create that many wigs from one package. That's pretty amazing. The method I presented in the tutorial is labor intensive; much more so than sewing on weave hair. I would be very interested in seeing how weave hair, sewn to a crochet cap, looks on these Bleuettes.

    Victoria

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  12. Victoria,
    I'm working on a doll now. Maybe I'll try the weave method to see if it works and submit the picture for you to view. I'm not sure how it will work but it was a thought. We'll see. My other question for both you and Beth is can you do the first 8-10 rows of the doll head in the color of hair (the color you would use for the wig cap) your going to use then change to the skin color instead of a wig cap? Would this save time or would that not work out?

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    1. The cool thing about dollmaking is trying new ideas. Give this a try and see if it works! I have not tried it, but I bet it would :-)

      Beth

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  13. Hi Anonymous,

    The funny thing is, I have a lot of difficulty with crochet. I can't read the patterns and I have can't seem to keep track of my stitches, so I stick with cloth and paperclay dolls. If I understand you correctly, you wish to crochet your doll's head so that the top of the head (where the hair is supposed to be) the hair color and do the rest of the head in the skin color yarn. I can't imagine why that wouldn't work just fine if it is your intention to have the hair on permanently. You'd have to be careful not to get the doll's head too wet if you wanted to curl the hair with water as a setting lotion. Also, you'd have to angle the weft around the hairline very close to the face in order for it to look like its growing from the scalp. Other than that, I think it would be a great timesaving idea that should look very nice. I do hope that you will share your wigged doll photos and how you went about making it happen!

    Hugs,
    Victoria

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  14. This is a very good one. I am happy that I came across it.
    Thank you so much for the share.

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