Rag Doll

RAG DOLL HAIR 

-story and tutorial-

                               

I tend to be very adventurous with my hair, and this is probably the wildest thing I've done with it. I've always thought dreads looked so cool, but I could never bring myself to get them because they get so dirty. A couple of weeks ago, I had a scarf tied around my head, and the ends of the scarf trailing down on my shoulders, and an idea got sparked. I know that it is common to braid hair and braid hair extensions in, and I decided to try braiding in pieces of cloth instead.

So, I headed to my nearest Walmart store and picked up 3 and a half yards of solid colored cotton cloth (about a foot each of nine colors). If you are trying this, I suggest 2.5-3 yards total cloth, I had too much cloth. I then cut little slits about 0.5 inches apart, and ripped the strips apart.

This is my hair in the pony tail, much better!

This didn't look exactly as I was hoping, but it looked much better in a pony tail. Since my hair is very short, it was quite a relief to be able to pull my hair back again.
This is the process I went through to get the cloth braided into my hair. The hardest part about it was getting the knot and the initial part of the braid tight to my scalp, from then on it was just a simple braid. When I got to the end of my own hair, I continued braiding just the cloth. At the end, I did an end knot with the double cloth strand.

This was about halfway through

Front view

Top view. I tied the braids across the top
to add a bit of volume and cover the top knots.

Again, the back of it. This was before I
unbraided it, it looked so much better once it
was part-undone

After having this in a week, I decided to take it out, and that's when I found out how to make it look even better. I unbraided one of my braids up to my own hair, then realized that the strands of cloth were tightly waved. So, I unbraided and re-tied the rest of my braids, stopping when I got the part where my hair was braided in.

This is just a small section of my hair after I
partially unbraided it. It looked so much better!

It made my head look much more volumized and pretty. If you try doing this, I suggest braiding it all the way down, spritzing water, then blow-drying it and sleeping on it. In the morning, take it out until you reach the end of your hair (if it's short) or about 3-4 inches from your scalp, then tie it off again. This should give you a curly, bouncy colorful head of cloth hair.

This is just another hair-raising adventure of mine! I hope you enjoy this, and have a wondrous day!






P.S. Do you have a lot of string and scraps of cloth left over from stripping the cloth? See what to do with them in my blog post String for the Birds!






As always, feel free to leave comments, suggestions, questions, pictures of your projects, or anything else you can think of!