After this post, I’ll follow up with another and revisit Halloweens of recent years where I used WOOL to help costume my husband. You can look forward to seeing Frankenstein, and yes, a Geisha! Bonus: a wet felted Witches Hat at the end of this post.
Omigawsh, making this Pirates of the Caribbean WIG was SO easy and I had SO much fun dressing up my husband. His workplace holds costume contest each year, and luckily he knows how much I enjoy assembling a new outfit. IF I can incorporate my skills with needle felting or wet felting WOOL, all the better. Here I give you…. not Jack Sparrow, but: the dread pirate Lester Chickenhawk.
He was wearing a fabulously lightweight, comfy wig AND mustache AND beard… all made with this black Alpaca fiber, from a baby Suri alpaca, and very much resembles human hair. Very soft, very light hair. Huacaya alpaca more resemble crinkly wool, but SURI alpaca is longer, smoother and rather like silky hair. I sometimes blended a bit of black Romney wool with the suri alpac for the added bulk.
All I did was separate locks and lay them on the needle felting pad, then stab stab stab, rotate, stab some more. Overlap one lock with another and needle enough to make them cling. Don’t worry about the fuzzies that stick out a bit after needling and peeling off the pad – it’ll barely show when your wig is finished. Here are locks of Romney wool, and Suri alpaca, and the long dreadlocks I needled together.
Below, on the LEFT, you see the blended fiber after needling them on the brush pad. On the RIGHT you see how the dreadlocks look after an added bit of wet felting. Less fuzz but still have that lofty lightness.
I sloppily needled wool and alpaca into a pancake by spreading the fiber over the needle felting pad, then kept trying to form a cup shape the pancake atop this mannequin head. Once it fit my husband’s head, I began attaching longer locks of alpaca on the top, leaving some half loose to later hang over headband. The dreadlocks were attached lower on the skullcap. Minus pirate gear, this could easily become a reggae wig!
Eventually I embellished the dreadlocks with more beads, a bluejay feather and leather strings.
So. You’ll be curious about the BEARD and MUSTACHE. I was just experimenting, and happily, it could hardly have gone easier. I laid some of the longer Alpaca locks on the same needle felting brush pad, and barely needled the sparse locks enough to just hold together. Gently peel off the pad, and trim away the fuzzies that stuck out behind. Braided the tapered ends and added beads. Held “mustache” against his face and trimmed to fit. It all looks more dense & darker in this overexposed photo.
And here’s my cool tip: Use EYELASH GLUE to stick beard & mustache on a face. Wow that stuff is terrific. He said “it feels like nothing” and it stayed put the whole day. Peeled off easily later, but he did have better luck rubbing off the residue with olive oil instead of baby oil. The wig look is so much better.
Bet you didn’t know Pirates could wage battle with Witches, didja? Who do you suppose won?
Edited to add this link from the past, which already has the Frankenstein wig. Ya know… you go absent over a few years of Covid and forget stuff you did before!
https://whimsicalewe.com/2016/10/31/needle-felted-wool-rescues-halloween/
Next post: how wool helped make an absolutely splendid Geisha wig.
Whimsical Ewe 