Hey all! I'm starting a build of a couple of puppets and plan to use yarn for their hair. I'm doing one male and one female puppet and want to give both of them a "hair style". His will be shorter and kind of spiked forward, hers will be longer locks that have a sort of spiral curl to them.

I've tried searching the forum for past topics covering this and have found a few threads that got close to what I'm talking about but none really applied to yarn hair. Most of the stuff I've found applied to wigs.

Okay Puppets and Stuff community, commence being brilliant in 3...2...1....GO!

I've recently used this tutorial for hair on Pink Lady (another thread) and I'm pleased with the results.

http://starrysheep.com/crafty/?p=103

You'll have to trim up the hair once it's attached, but that's pretty straightforward.

In the past, I've made curly hair by winding polyester yarn around a metal knitting needle then steaming it with my iron. It's important to use a poly based yarn so it'll hold the curl. Then use the tutorial above to make the wig.

Hope this helps!

Thanks for the wefting link! I do have some experience with a couple of different wefting techniques but this one has some advantages. I'll have to give it a go.

I'm more interested in the curling/styling tip though. I do have a steamer so I wouldn't have trouble steaming the yarn. I'll have to check and see if the yarn I have in stock is poly based or not and test it out.

I'll welcome any other tips folks might have. One of my concerns is how well whatever method I use is going to hold the style. These are for a commissioned job and though they won't be getting heavy performance-type use they will need to hold up a bit none the less.

Do you think this technique would work on strand materials other than yarn?  Like loose packaged doll hair, perhaps?

I've been looking around for hair ideas.  Punching seems like it would take forever plus the hold isn't great.  Wigs are often too big for puppets.  Wefting hair seems like the best approach for custom hair. 

Oh.. just found this...

http://samthesahm.blogspot.com/2011/08/curling-yarn-hair.html

I'm not sure how I feel about using an oven but I guess 200F isn't that hot.

Hrm... How to hold a style is harder. Off the top of my head, I'd suggest glue.

It's a method I learned from punk kids, Elmer's white glue is the styling product of choice for many people with mowhawks or Liberty spikes. For yarn hair, I'd dilute some plain white glue in water so you can spray it out of a spray bottle. Once the hair is attached to the puppet skull, spray down the hair and style it, using a hair dryer to speed up the set.

You might be able to use spray starch, available in the laundry section, but I'm not sure how it would hold up.

Mostly, just remind the performers that the hair isn't un-mess-up-able, and may need a little styling from time to time.

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You think you might be able to adapt this technique?

The method of using a steamer or even the oven on a poly yarn should hold it's curl for the most part. In simple terms you are heating up the plastic in the fiber and then letting it cool down in the shape you want. It is a bit like a perm on real hair.  That being said like Dr. Megan mentioned all styles need a bit of care at times. You really can't get around that. 

I've tried the white glue method on a wig before to try and keep the shapes I wanted with limited success. Again this was a wig and used on a person and I wanted a very stylized look that was kind of rigid. Over time the small fibers kind of broke loose from the bond and the style got a bit fuzzy.  It might work great for a short spiked look though.

Thanks everyone! I have some white glue and a spray gun that I think I'll experiment with. I will have to get to a fabric store to find some poly yarn to try for the girl's hair. That will probably work well enough. I'll be trying the glue method on the guy's hair. It sounds like it should work out alright. Ah, puppetry. Always learning, always experimenting.

While we are on the topic, I wanted to remind folks of horse hair or crin tubeing. It can make some really fun hair for a puppet. It might even be an alternative for this project. http://www.cosplaysupplies.com/tutorials.php?id=Cyberlox_Falls  Also in the tutorial I just linked to they mentioned adding craft foam (Foamies) to the wig. I would bet that you could cut strips of it and curl it around something just like the yarn and end up with an interesting looking wig.  Being thin strips you might have to be a bit careful not to tear them off though. 

They also call these cyberloxs now it looks like. http://www.cypherlox.com/  If you use that search term in google you'll get a lot more examples and places to buy the tube crin.

BTW: In America we normally call this material horse hair but in Canada they call it crin. Crin seems to get better results when you are searching for resources.