Making wig for full body mask

To add to the movement of the piece as well as help blur the lines between mask and puppeteer I decided to make a wig.

I decided to test some of the pieces of netting fabric to see if i could make them curled for the hair. I did this first by wrapping them tightly around a wooden spoon and submerging it in boiling water for 5 mins

This worked well but the curls were very small and the process was time consuming so I thought if i could roll and boil each strand at the same time it would be better.

so i tried rolling them and pinning them in place

But they didnt work so i tried making rollers from chicken wire to make them tight.

This worked but for some reason the curls were very delicate and i was worried that with all the movement of the mask the curls would drop anyway.

So i decided that curling all the hair was not worth my time and that having straight strand would be just as effective.

So I started by making a cap to the shape of the head from tent fabric using darts to make hug the form.

I cut the excess of the base fabric to make the edges fringed. I then started sewing layers of scrap netting I salvaged from textiles’ scrap bin to the cap.

The strips of selve edge netting scraps were very long so to make it quicker and easier than sewing each strand on individually I strung them together to make strips of loops to sew on in layers.

I made a timelapse video of the process and put it on my instagram account:

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Small snippet of wig making process for my full body mask / puppet head. All fabric is upcycled from abandoned tents or from scrap bins. #mask #puppetry #sustainability #sustainablepractice #upcycled #upcycledart #recycledart #recycled #takeyourtenthome

A post shared by Masquerave (@rhiannayates_masquerave) on May 7, 2020 at 5:57am PDT

Once the mask was complete I drilled 3 pairs of holes in to the head and sewed a piece of wool in those place on the wig for it to be tied to the head.