Curly wild hair.

When I original sketched my rough idea for the girl dancing Over the Hills, I drew her with a mane of curly, wild hair - perhaps with a few flowers sprinkled through it. But how do you stitch that?

The ideas of how to do it have been simmering for a little while but I confess I was a little worried about if what I had in mind would work. After all, adding lots of stitches over and through the top of the head would easily turn into a real mess.

The first bit was pretty straight forward - create a foundation for the flowing locks. A rough base for shape and direction. To give the hair a bit of bulk, I added a bit of felt padding first, then added long stitches over the top. At this point she looked more like she is facing a bit of a storm, don't you think.

Years ago, I made little dolls with my grandma, and we used to make curly hair by casting yarn onto knitting needles and then pulling the stitches off. I figured the same method would work this time - fine threads and a fine knitting needle. To make sure the 'curls' would set, I steamed it just a a few minutes. 

It ended up sitting on the needle for a couple of weeks (you know what it is like) and when I finally pulled it off last night it most certainly had set! Once I unravelled the little spring, it was pretty clear that since I wasn't intending on giving her an afro, only the half of the thread that had been around the needle would do. So fare so good.

Gently easing the curly thread bit by bit and the hair started to take shape. It was working (happy face!) Mind you, it was very slow going as you can probably imagine the curly thread would twist and snag and if I accidentally pulled too tight, well the curls were pulled out.

Slowly but surely it got there. Flowing, curly wild hair. Looks ok I think and it wasn't at all as difficult as I had thought it might be.

Have a lovely rest of the week,
Anna x