Breaking Down the Wigs

I had to make the wigs look like they had been around the beach for a long time, so I started with spray-painting the tips of the dreads a red-brown and green:

 Then painting in with blue, brown and copper acrylic paints for a more algae-type look:

 And took some sand mixed into glue and matted some of that in there too:

 And did the same to the mixed-media dreads as well:

Eighth Week Breathe Review

Wednesday, 16 May: Breathe Together Club
I finished sewing down the dreads that were too small to stay down on their own and added a braid to the fig. 5 wig, finishing it.

And got some first years to help me prepare some mixed-media dreads for the fig. 6 wig with materials from the "Rebels" box while I painted the base of the second wig green to match the felt as well, then made a few dreads myself:

Thursday, 17 May: We only had a short amount of time to work Thursday, because Thursday afternoon was completely occupied with student presentations where all Level 5 got together to do powerpoint presentations of what they had done for SDP, so I just spent the morning organizing all my materials to bring home to work on after presentations.

I first started by sewing a row of feathers on as a sort of fringe in the front, then added beaded fringe along the back of the neck to fill some space. Then I sort of organized the dreads from the colour organization I had done earlier into a left/right/back style instead.

 I finished the right side first,

 then worked on the left side on Sunday,

 and had these pieces left for the back, which I finished Monday night,

 and photographed this morning:

Front

Right Profile

Back

Left Profile

And got this picture of the two wigs together:

Seventh Week Breathe Review

Wednesday, 9 May: Breathe Together Club
I brought the dreads I had already made as a sample, and Emma and I worked with a few people on the backcombing step of the dreads at Breathe Together:

Thursday, 10 May: I went to uni to get the dreads from the night before and the base of the wig for fig.5 and took them home to paint the base the same green as the felt so that if the base can be seen it won't be as noticeable.

 And I ironed all the dreads.

Friday, 11 May and Saturday 12 May: I began sewing the dreads on through the felt to make sure the felt was secure, but was using embroidery thread which wasn't strong enough, so I had to switch to thicker embroidery floss and sewed dreads all the way around the base.

just starting

A few layers of dreads sewn into felt all around the base

 Then I sewed a few more layers around the edges of the front to pull backed, sewed a few to cover the base where the front hair would be pulled back and sewed some longer dreads to the top of the back where the hair would be pulled back to, because it was quite heavy, there weren't enough dreads, and it would've been impractical to sew them all over then try to pull some back because it would've become un-wearably heavy.

 Then I pulled the front hair back and bobby pinned the dreads in place that were to small to stay in place, ready to be sewn down at the eighth week of Breathe Together Club, assuming my supervisors and tutors like how it looks.

Sixth Week Breathe Review

Wednesday, 2 May: I removed the wig bases from the hat forms prior to Breathe Together Club:

 Then we put them on, traced around the hairline, and cut away the excess veriform:

Emma, wearing an un-modified fig.6 base

Me, wearing the un-modified fig.5 base

Emma, wearing the modified fig.5 base

 Thursday, 3 May: I got green felt from the boxes in the Breathe room Thursday morning, and made a sort of bias binding to cover the sharp edges of the veriform and hot glued it on like so:

Then spent the afternoon at home making my first set of dreads with the kanekalon hair.

back-combing

ironing

The first, sort of practice, set of dreads I made