Adventures in Rerooting

Welcome Friends!

This post has been a long time coming for sure. 

I hope you all enjoyed the 2020 Fashion Show! It was super fun to put together and to show you all the new fashions for my vintage dolls (and some newcomers!)

Well, I got a wild hair. I've been seeing people doing yarn reroots on dolls and I got the itch to do one. OKAY, all the ways this could go wrong ran around in my head but I decided to take the plunge and do it anyway! 

So, here are my adventures on this project and how I made it overly cumbersome on myself in the process. HA! And it was an adventure let me tell you!

First, I needed a subject. I dug in the doll bin (again) and found this girl.

I have no idea who she is or what line she is from but she had pretty sparkly pink lips so I thought she would be a great doll for this reroot. She also had some hot glue around her bust. Not sure why.

Her hair was in not that great shape and she also had a dab of hot glue in the hair along with some more on her back.
 

I bought this yarn on closeout at Hobby Lobby a couple of years ago. I used it to make doll beach bags and beach blankets (which turned out great by the way.) I have three bundles of it so I figured why not? Rainbow hair could be a really cool edgy look. Its super soft and called "crayon." 
 

I figured this would be a great chance to attempt my doll hair cutting skills. And by skills I mean none whatsoever. I attempted a bob. 

Before...

...and after. 
 

Midway through cutting, I realized that synthetic hair is THICK. So I had to do this little by little and it ended up looking chopped to the highest degree. (And here you can see the hot glue on her back.) Naturally, if I were to try cutting again I will take smaller pieces to cut.
 

I cut more off and honestly, the short look here doesn't look half bad! I actually kind of like it.
 

I got as much off as I could. 
 

Now it was head removal time. I've removed doll heads before (from newer dolls) so I know what they look like and how to get them off. However, this one was so stuck on and I almost broke the neck peg. Upon further inspection it seems that the head was HOT GLUED on. I'm not sure if it was because of the hot glue on the body but I know that normal doll heads are not glued on to the neck peg. 

So here it begins. The best way to do this is to grab the leftover hair through the neck with tweezers so you can remove the hair glue and get the head clean before the reroot. Well, the problem with tweezers is that the neck is too small and was squeezing the tweezers shut before I could grab anything with them. So I figured (in my infinite wisdom) to heat up the head and pull the plugs of hair and glue out the top with needlenose pliers. The result was a sticky, icky, gooey, hairy mess.  

AND, I still had a lot of hair to go. AND, there was still hair and glue inside the head.
 

Yeah, time consuming and irritating (and sticky)

So what do I do now? I watched another reroot video and they used forceps. So project got put on hold until my Amazon order came in with the forceps.

www.amazon.com

Now comes the needles! Oh this was a fun one. The first reroot video I watched, she used a really thick yarn, looked a lot thicker than the yarn I have. She used a #20 embroidery needle. I asked my mother in law if she had one and she did. Must not have been a #20 because the yarn wouldn't go through and I broke my needle threader trying to get it through. 

So down to the fabric store to look for needles (and another needle threader.) All they had was #24 embroidery (tapestry) needles and #16 yarn needles. And remember, the higher the number the smaller the eye. 

Well the eye of the 24 was too small. The 16 worked but the diameter of the needle was way too thick and wouldn't go through the existing root holes in the head. Back to Amazon.

Ordered the #20 tapestry needles and THE EYE WAS STILL TOO SMALL. The lady said she used a 20! With thick yarn! Grr. Back to Amazon.

I found a #18 chenille needle so I was sure that this would be the one. NOPE. I was almost able to get it through but no good. I can't be buying more needles. So this one had to work. I had to improvise. 

Back to the forceps. Forceps worked GREAT! I was pulling out large chunks of hair and glue that I wasn't able to pull out through the outside of the head with the needlenose pliers. 

It still seemed like there was A LOT of glue in this head and I'm not sure if that was because I had heated the head multiple times and the glue got soft or what. But this was a perfect remedy and worked better than tweezers ever could. 

It was very hard to get the last row of hair that was lowest on the head closest to the neck. I started to scrape with the end of the forceps and that pulled out all the remaining hair plugs in one fell swoop. I also shined a flashlight through the head to check for any remaining chunks of glue (like the one I pulled out above.) I was finally able to get most of it all out. Still had to pull some of the hairs out through the top but that was a non issue. 

Here is little miss baldie. 

 

Then I found out one of my childrens had played with the yarn I had wrapped around a card for this project. After untangling, in which I felt like I was playing the worlds largest game of Cat's Cradle, I got that all squared away, ready to cut for the hair.

Okay, now the needles. I was thinking I could just bend the eye open a little more, ever so slightly to allow the yarn more room to pass through. 

I guess I pulled a little too hard (which wasn't hard at all!) and it snapped the eye hole.  

Well, it was worth a try at least. Threaded the needle, and pushed it through the first root hole right at the part line. 

Use a pliers to pull the needle through the neck until the short yarn end comes through. Trust me, you need a pliers to do this. Tie a knot at the end through the neck. 
 

Pull the yarn back through until the knot stops it. First root success!
 

And then the second root, this happened. 
 

I have determined that this yarn is too soft and it frays and breaks easily. But that's the reason I wanted it in the first place. It's not too thick (it is apparently for all the needles I tried) and it is just so colorful and pretty! It had to work, I was determined.

I had some yarn pieces that came out of the eye altogether after pulling through the neck (since it's broken) but I started to get a rhythm down of how exactly I had to do this. 

I had to push the needle in as far as I could with a thimble, take the needle nose pliers and push the needle down even further (to the point where it squishes the head) and then reach my pliers as far up into the head as I could to grab the needle and pull it through. Sometimes I would just get the needle and no thread so I had to reach the forceps up in there to grab the yarn so I could get a hold of it. So the process is not too bad overall. 

I did a few more roots and went every other to every two holes trying to alternate the colors. You don't want every hole with a yarn reroot as the hair will be too thick. And the great thing about yarn. You don't need to hot glue the hair in because the knot stops it from pulling back through! So no more hot glue for this doll thank goodness. 

It was nearing midnight and I got this far. 
 

You can see that some are shorter than the others. As I mentioned some of the yarn frays so I had to cut the ends off after I threaded the needle so It wouldn't end up like the pink strand shown above. But i'm not too worried about the length as I'll fix it up at the end. But it's looking pretty good so far!

The next night I finished around the head. Looking better!

Getting there

And then finally, I finished her!

Not so bad if I do say so myself! 

So this was the result of two broken needles, many snagged pieces of yarn, countless finger pricks and tangled yarn (again.) However, I am very happy with how she turned out. Once I got my rhythm down I was able to finish it pretty quickly. 

So putting the head back on was not easy. The yarn in the head made the neck peg a little tight. I couldn't push the head on all the way. And because the peg was a little broken she ended up with somewhat of a bobble head. Just don't move her and she'll be fine. 

Outfit. I was thinking about the middle outfit from this Sporty Fashionista Closet.

I even have the silver boots! But somehow, the shirt was no where to be found. Probably on one of my dolls...way in the depths of my closet. And I wasn't going to be digging in there, at least not right now. 

So I found this sparkly little number.

The nice thing about yarn hair is you can style it in virtually anyway you can think of. Because it "sticks" to itself it makes it easy for some twisty hairdo's.
 

Not sure where this skirt and shirt are from but the skirt has a little butterfly on it. And it totally works with her beautiful rainbow hair. 
 

Her foot had some little chew marks in it so I hid it with these cute little pink numbers. I need to get some of those shoe fashion packs so I have more options like this! I have a lot of pumps, open toe and boots. 
 

I'm just so thrilled with how it turned out. 
 

The problem with this yarn is it snags super easy. Since it's super soft baby yarn it really stuck to each other when I was pulling the hair through the root holes. I haven't trimmed it yet, not sure about that yet. I kind of like the uneven lengths. I see a few I want to trim off but not sure about the rest of it. I kind of like it! 

And, I know you're not going to beleive this, I want to do it again! My son had the idea that I should do black and white hair. I really want to do it and I have the most perfect outfit in mind. I think if you would like to attempt a yarn reroot you should definitely do it but only if you have the correct tools to use. It makes it a lot easier.

So what do you think of miss Rainbow Hair? Like it? Not sure or not for you? Let me know in the comments! 

I think I'll work on some of my clothing organization. Seems like a good idea. However next up I have a super special post for you, I hope you'll tune in for that one. Until then!