The Wool I Use

My girls all have hand styled wool tops for hair, another name for wool tops is wool roving,  This is the same material that felt makers use to make handmade felt or weavers use to spin thread. The tops comes from a variety of different sheep with varying textures, I mostly use merino wool tops as it is soft and makes lovely curls & waves for the doll.

Wool tops arrives as a batt or long piece of roving with all the fibres going in the same direction, I select the amount of wool I need and gently pull the tops apart.  I have to say practise is needed to know how much wool each size of doll needs, too much can be pulled into tight curls which can look good but too little won't work.  I find you cannot add more tops successfully and need to start again. The tops is stitched to the head with matching thread and styled as you go, this takes patience and a good eye, again practise is needed.

I have in the past, used many different materials for doll hair but come back to wool tops as a favourite.  One of its many attractions is the range of colour you can get.  Tones and hues in beautiful shades.  Mostly these days I use natural hair colours, browns, fawns, brunettes etc, but I cannot resist a doll with pink hair.  The brands I favour are Trimits Natural Wool Roving and Clover Natural Wool Roving.  Both are readily available and come in very pretty shades, however they are only sold in small quantities so if you are making a large doll then I would recommend tops sold by George Weil. There aren't as many colours but you can buy a large batt for a large doll head.  Lastly I wouldn't recommend tops for a doll for a child, the wool can be pulled away if you are vigorous and rough play may result in a hand full of wool or worse a mouth full of wool.