Building a foundation for your BJD doll wig

This tutorial is the next in a series about making wigs for bjd dolls. You should ideally have a wig block on which to make a wig. The previous tutorial shows you how to make one.

Hand-tied, or ventilated wigs are made using a foundation with a silk mesh called 'lace.' There are a lot of different types of mesh and lace a person can buy for the making of wigs. Swiss and French lace are the finest of these materials, and also the most expensive. Dolls only require a small amount of material, so it would be advisable to start with maybe one type of lace and become accustomed to that before going into exposed hairlines which can be the trickiest of wigs to make.

UL->CCW German lace or vegnet, French lace, Swiss lace beige, Swiss lace pink, caul net.

I make my foundations using german lace and swiss lace. You can purchase these from a variety of vendors that sell ventilating or wigmaking materials. I'd recommend His & Her since they carry ventilating needles, handles, lace of various weight, etc. If you are making a weft wig, a muslin or similar foundation will work fine. The jury is out on if a foundation should be the same color as hair or the same color as skin. Most doll wigs with wefting use a foundation the same color as the hair.

After selecting your foundation, you will want to start to drape on your wig block starting at the back nape.

Place a pin at the bottom center and one at each corner of the nape behind the ear.  Place a pin in the center of the crown so the fabric is half on the left and half on the right.  Note the grain:  the hexagons have a flat side on the top and bottom and points to the left and right.  You do not want the grain to be the opposite way as it will stretch in an odd way.

Next we will focus on pinning near the ear.  You will want to use tension to make the lace lay as flat as possible and tight to the wig block.

I often will pin right in the center of the ear, but here I've place a pin just above and in front of the ear.  The ear pokes out a bit from my block, and it actually causes the wig to grow, so I need to pin as tightly to the area above and behind the ear.  You'll see the first part of the next step which is to create pleats along the crow.  These pleats will accommodate the extra fabric and make a smooth cap for the head.

This view of the block is face-down and I'm looking at the very top of the head.  You can see my first pleat on the right and the beginning of the next pleat.  I will make pleats and pin them as smoothly as I can, then I will sew all layers of net together.

Here are all of my pleats before I sew them.  You can see that the foundation is smooth against the curve of the wig block.  Keeping everything tight and smooth will help in the final product.  I can get a needle and thread and sew each pleat.  (Are you tired yet?  It's more work than it looks like, huh?)

Here we are with the sewn pleats.  You can see what they are doing to help reinforce the curve of the foundation.  If you could touch this, you would see that the lace has very little stretch, retains good integrity in holding it's shape, yet is very light weight.  It's a great material to work on.  It is made from silk so that the harsh chemicals that typically degrade synthetic materials will not degrade the foundation.  This includes acetones and bleaches.

I've trimmed the lace so that there is a straight line directly across the top of the crown and to the top of each ear.  I will make a front for the wig, very similar to the back, only made from this swiss lace.  I'll pleat and sew the front onto the back.  I tried to reinforce this seam with the bias tape, but ultimately chose not to use it.  Too many materials make the doll wig bulky and unnatural.  Making the smoothest and best fitting foundation of mesh works best (so far.)

This lace is a good match for my doll's resin color.  My limited testing shows that matching skin tone for foundation in a wig front is the better choice, at least for light/white skin tone.

I'll trim a small piece of lace for the front, and start to pin along the brow and in front of the ears, then work my way up to the crown to make pleats.

 

When I put this on, it sits flat and smooth across the forehead and even down to the nose.  I will trim the excess lace when the wig is finished.  The wig will have integrity if it is attached in this method, but if you tilt it and start up above the eyebrows it will affect the grain and structure of the wig.

I failed to take a picture of the this wig when I sewed the top seam altogether, but repeat the previous pleating and sew front to back.  If you've gotten this far, you will probably be fine.  You can see here that the wig still needs to be trimmed.  And styled.  I used some human hair a friend gave me and hand tied the wig.  I will not go into ventilating in this tutorial, but there are plenty of youtube videos of much higher quality than I have made. 

I'm going to call this good for today, and I'll upload some photos of the last wig that I made using brunette hair.

How to make a wig block for your bjd

A wig block is a really useful tool. It is intended for use in making and storing wigs. Even if you don't make your own wigs, it is a handy little storage device which doesn't cost much at all. For the pros out there, this same technique can be used to make slopers for your doll head to make a canvas/muslin wigblock. I have not made one of these yet, so I will not address that topic, but you can mull it over.

I know the photo quality is not great, (sorry.) It's a good thing this is not a photography blog. I'll go into draping a foundation in the next tutorial for the first part in building a wig.

Ball-jointed dolls - a new obsession

This is a blog I just created so I can have a place to post some of my doll stuff. I've fallen in love with these ball-jointed dolls and I've finally given in and purchased two resin dolls. One reason I wanted to look into this hobby is my interest in theater and film makeup and wigmaking. I love the idea that I can have tiny little projects to ply these skills on, and at the end of the night it won't necessarily get washed off or I won't have to reset the wig several times a week, like you might do on an opera or theater production. The more I muddled around for the first few weeks with wigmaking for bjd dolls, I realized that there are many tutorials out there, but none of them (that I've read) have the same types of techniques I'm adopting from my short wigmaking internship. I wanted a place to make a tutorial of my own, and also just to store some sort of documentation of my doll projects.