Wig Progress

So, I have some progress to update on. The wig is now in progress. Well, it's actually mostly done, it just needs some more paint.

     

What I ended up doing was cutting the legs off of a pair of tights and sewing the seam shut in a fairly head shaped manner, it didn't need to be totally precise as I then sewed down yarn all over it. I ended up sewing long (~3 ft) pieces of yarn down the middle from the front of the wig until about 3/4 of the way all the way back the mid seam of the wig. This not only attached most of the yarn I needed onto the wig, it created a nice middle part which the weeping angel has.

After that, it was a matter of getting all the yarn into the correct style, which took me probably about 5 hours. The wig has definitely taken me a lot longer to make than I thought it would, but I think it has come out pretty well. The pattern of the hair is fairly close to that of the reference images I have.

After I took these pictures, I fitted it and realized the curls didn't come down far enough in the back, and in the process of gluing everything down, the wig didn't come down far enough over my ears, so I added more curls to the bottom and more around the front edge.

The curls around the front and edges were made by taking pipe cleaners, hot gluing some yarn down to one end, and then wrapping the yarn down the length of the pipe cleaner, gluing it down to the other end, and then making the pipe cleaner into the shape I want and gluing the curl down on the wig and blending the end into the rest of the yarn. I used a combination of hot glue and craft tack glue.

The bun in the back was mostly sewn down into place as I was getting mad at the hot glue gun (I end up burning myself a lot when I use hot glue) and sewing allowed me to manipulate a lot more yarn at once. The bun probably took me an hour or two to get to a place where I was happy with it. I think it is quite a bit larger than the buns on the actual angels, but close enough. Close enough is what I usually go with when I'm costuming. Perfection usually comes after I finish the costume, realize I'm not happy with a part of it, and then go back in and fix it.

Once everything was in place, and the tack glue was dried, I started painting. It has one coat of paint on it right now, and I thought that would be enough and it would be light enough, but the yarn is very bulky and it soaked in pretty well and darkened back down after it dried.

 I'm trying to match the color of the mask, which is appreciably lighter than the wig at the moment, so the wig is definitely going to be needing more paint, and more than likely a lighter gray. Once I finish the wig, it's onto the wing harness. That is going to be fun and frustrating. Maybe actually make design plans before I start cutting up PVC? Maybe.