How To Weft Hair For Your Creature Cosplays

What do you do when you need a section of very long fur or hair on your creature, build in this video I'll, show you what I did to make hoggers tail and his mane this technique? Will let you choose the color the length everything about you, the hair that you need, so, let's make some monsters, hello, I'm Kazuo and welcome to my lair now. Let'S talk about wedding hair wedding is the process of taking a bunch of loose hair like this and making it into a usable strip like this? This is also very tough. The hair won't come out of this. It'S great, so I'm going to show you that how you can pretty Lee make a bundle like this to create longer effects on your creatures, like I did on hoggers tail. This is his tail and his name. You can pretty cheaply make this and you can choose the exact color. You can choose the exact length you can get it to 48 inches long and you'd like I really like it, because it flows really nicely and it can really add a lot to your next creature build. So I'm here to show you how I did it. So, let's get this ritual of summoning started, you will need some scissors. You will also need some hair fiber that comes in a few different names. There'S Kanekalon jumbo braids, braiding hair, just any raw hair fiber that you can find you'll need a hairbrush. I, like paddle brushes, they seem to work the best. You need some tape that has low tack. I, like blue painters, tape with a two inch wide. You can use masking tape I'll show you a trick for how to make it better. We need a hair straightener that has an adjustable temperature knob, and you will also need thread that matches your hair color, that you're sewing and lastly, you'll need a double machine, needle a double or a triple. You can do it with a single, but the double really helps take down the work that you need to do so. Here'S the hair taken out of the package. These are the particular colors that I chose for Hager, but I also like to use a random coat. Hanger thing I use C clamps to attach it to my table and just lay it here. So with these colors I chose four Hager. I picked out a black and espresso and a honey color from from doctored locks. So that's the espresso. That'S the brown, the the espresso and the black looked very similar like in real life, but you can see on camera, they're very diverse, so slightly different, so I decided to keep using them and just do like equal parts of each. So I'm just going to grab a little section from each color and you'll actually want to start pretty small. You can easily make it well it you can make it hard on yourself by doing a bunch at once. I definitely recommend starting small til. You get the hang of it and you know even then it'll help you work faster if you work in smaller chunks, so I just grabbed equal sections of all three of them and you can see how long this hair is. I don't really need that much length for hoggers mane, so I'm actually going to grab my scissors and cut this in half. So you see how handy the coat hanger comes to just store the hair, I'm just gon na cut off the and even out the edge on the other side to which you'll see through this whole process. It seems like there's a lot of waste with it, but there really it's really worth it to keep it clean and trimmed up and you'll see. Why so, now that I've have this, the all these hairs that I need to combine I'll, show you how I mix it together, and you start with just like pulling it apart in half putting it back together and and going back through sifting through the hairs pulling Apart, you know it's just a process, you just put it right. On top of it, trying to keep the edges lined up as best you can, and basically the goal is that, as you're sifting through you are, are trying to separate any clumps of colors out. It helps after a few mixes like that, to get your paddle brush out, make sure to hold it really tightly and and just brush through it. It realigns all the fibers so that it's easier to to sift through with your thumbs, like you see me, do which in a moment here I'll, be getting an up-close of what I'm doing. So. You can see that there's clumps of colors in there that when I put it on top of each other, I'm just looking for those clumps and trying to separate them out. And you can already see that, like you, just have to keep doing this over and over and it'll slowly become more mixed together and more incorporated to a solid looking color so and as you're mixing. You may notice that you can you sometimes get really long extra bits, so another strategy to get rid of those as you move your hands down to the ends of the thing and just pull it'll it'll pull those ends that maybe got a little uneven and it It and it also helps mix the fibers too, so you can, while you're mixing, do this and that'll help you realign the fibers, so they're they're more straight with each other. You can also take some scissors and clean up that that bottom edge, if you find that it's getting a little bit too much too many stragglers like I said there, it seems like there's a lot of waste hair in this process, but it's really worth it to To not have that extra dangly mess, so I'm just gon na zoom through this next part too, so you can see the mixing happening in in real time. This is probably the part of the process that takes the longest to get get the color that you want. You can you can definitely leave it more clumpy if that's the look you're going for, but I was definitely going for a more solidly mixed look and there you go look how much hair comes off on your brush, but you really still have quite a bit of Hair left in in your bundle, so it's fine just discard it so now that you have the hair all completely mixed, you can see it has. It'S still pretty much has like some gross blunt edges, and you don't want that. You want that to have a nice tapered edge, so we're gon na act like we're, mixing it again, but instead of putting it directly on top we're gon na shift it forward and backwards. So this first one I shifted forward, then this next one I'll take and I'll shift it backwards, though, and you just like go through again, just like you're mixing it, and and shuffle it like this, so this is called shuffling the hair. It creates the nice tapered edges and it does take a little while, and you can definitely start doing this process at the at the same time as you're mixing it, which I usually do. You can already see it's starting to have a pretty good effect, but it's still, you can still see like the the choppy edges, so I'm gon na zoom through again the process of shuffling the hair around you can over shuffle it. Sometimes you see that part was really long, so you can use that trick again where you go down to the ends and realign it if you accidentally over shuffle and - and you just like continue through this process and the more you do it, the more natural the Taper will start to look, so I think I'm pretty satisfied with how it is here. You can definitely do more. You can definitely do less if you like, so here you can see side-by-side. The left one has been tapered. The right one has is just blunt from mixing it or cutting it to whatever length you need. You can definitely see that the tapered one looks much more natural, so the next part of the process is taping it. This is where you get out your blue painters. Tape - and it also helps to get a little ruler out and lay it on the table next to where you're taping it just so. You can make any particular length of a weft that you want, so what i'm doing here is placing the tape on the table. Sticky side up so just rolling over one edge or both the edges, so that I can have it stick to the table firmly and what I need is two pieces with the edge facing up also with about an inch or a little less than an inch channel. In between them now I mentioned before, you can definitely use masking tape. What you'll have to do is lay it on your clothes and lift it off a few times and that'll take the tack most the tack away and make it easier to separate the hairs in later steps. So then, you take a tiny bundle of hair. Now use less hair than you think you will and what the goal is is you're, just laying it quite thinly across the tape you want. If you have too much it'll, make it hard to work with so definitely err on the side of too little. You can see here, like I just grabbed a little bit now, I'm adding slightly more. I the it definitely yeah. You definitely just want to have a little. The goal is to have most the hair sticking to the tape. So next you'll take another piece of tape and lay it down over the top of the other sticky part, and you really smash it hard together. The the goal is to sandwich the hair in between these two layers of tape, because next we're going to sew it and these little tape skates, as I call them help you be able to feed it into the machine. So once you have the two top layers supplied just pull up those edges fold them around, so you don't have any more sticky showing and there you go. It'S ready to be sewn together. Oh and one more thing that I want to mention about positioning the hair in between the tape you can, if you want position it more to one side or the other, I showed you that I was positioning it right in the center of the tape so that The weft would be sewn in the center if you push it to one side or the other. That means that your weft will be folded over, so you can have a thicker base and thinner hairs. If you want that look you'll see through the rest of the video that you know yeah you fold it over and sew it together. So if you want and evenly thick left through the thing or if you want your West longer, you can definitely push it to one side or the other. If that makes sense, so here's my sewing machine all set up. I have it set up with the double sewing needle and you can see. I have a walking foot too. You don't really need one. It does help a lot, but that's what the skates are for. I'Ve got it set up to a zig-zag stitch and I'm just sewing on a scrap piece of muslin here, so you can see about how big the zigzag I've got set up. You can see I'm using both brown and black fur. I am out of enough black spools of thread, so I'm just mixing in a brown and it's close enough to the base color that it doesn't matter so. The first line just use, use those tape skates to help feed it through and you don't have to back stitch or anything just go straight through sewing down the line like I said you don't need to back stitch, but when you get to the other side, you Have to rotate it around and then you're gon na flip it over then without cutting the thread. You'Re just gon na pull those back and create a little loop with the thread. That'Ll also help you pull it through. So you'll see like. I use that to help pull it through a second time and you're just gon na loop back and forth over this seam about four times. That'S how many times I do it and that's what the double needle. So, if you're, using a if you're using a triple needle you'd, only have to go over it like two times, but if you're using a single needle you'll have to go over it even more. Like eight times so, I'm gon na zoom through the rest of my time just going through it, and you see those those little thread loops like really do help you just start feeding it through. So there's that half so then we're gon na get out. My straightener and I like to set the temperature to about 200 or just over 200 degrees. Definitely err on the side of to cool and slowly raise it as you're testing it, because because these are synthetic fibers, they are very prone to melt so keep it low go slow, but basically the goal is that what we're trying to do is just fold it Over in half and and smash it down, you could probably do this with your clothes iron as well just on a lower temperature, but the goal is to just flatten it like this, so we can feed it through the sewing machine again as as after it's been Folded over so back to the sewing machine. This is where those thread tails come in handy since, since you've lost one of your skates, it's harder to feed it through at this point, and so you it's definitely worth it to have those tails so that you can pull it through and we're just going to Do the same zig-zag stitch right over the top of the seam that you've done before and we're gon na do pretty much the exact same thing, rotate it around and flip it over and pull it back through, and do this again, four more times for the double Needle you and there you have it now, it's time to remove the tape. So the easiest way I've found to remove the tape isn't from the sides like this. It'S pretty difficult. I just take from the middle and pull it out away from the hair until I'm confident I don't have any fibers stuck in. There then cut it in half and just pull it from one end off the weft. You see there will be loose hairs that are stuck in there. That'S okay! You don't want loose hairs in your weft, so that's fine that they're being taken away at this stage, there's enough left in there that if the weft is still complete and thick in full, so after pulling off the tape, we can admire your work. You can get the brush out and and brush it pull out any more loose hairs, but the majority of them should be very firmly stuck in the in, in that thread, bundle that you made with the zig zag stitch. So now is the time that you can cut off those tails, and this is an optional step, depending on how you want to use your weft. This is a leans frase top just a flexible and any flexible fabric glue will work and what I'm gon na do is just put it on the very ends of this to keep it from fraying. So if, if your intent is to sew these wefts into something, I would definitely do do this step to keep it from fraying and make sure that that thread bundle stays secure. If you will intend to glue these seams in you'll already be gluing them. So you can skip this step entirely, so after that's all dry, you can then apply it to your project if you want to beforehand like the Kanekalon has a sort of artificial kink to it. If you want, you can slowly take the the straightener and straighten out some of the hairs. It helps give it a little bit more natural appearance, like I said, you'll have to experiment with how hot you can get so that you don't overheat and destroy your fibers, but you can see just like a very slight difference, but it does help and you can Straighten it before or after you put it on your monster, so here I'm gon na grab hoggers tail and show you how I applied the in there. I have a flexible form underneath that is just covered in spandex, and you can see I've glued this seam down here in and that seam up there is just sewn in you can see. I only tacked it every few inches if you've ever seen like used a wig, the inside looks very similar. They just have like a a form that they so though the West to sew sewing it takes longer. But you also have the flexibility that if you mess up or want to change things or recycle wefts from one costume to another, you can take them out and reuse them. Gluing is much faster for the application, but then it also kind of ruins the weft. If, if you do have to get it out, it will be clumpy with glue or it may not even want to come out altogether depending on how well you glue it, you can definitely sew it all the way down the edge like this one. I sewed very carefully along this edge just so it would be a nice transition, since it was the one that was most likely to be visible, there's how you can install them into your monsters. So here's the doctored locks site where I bought the Kanekalon for this particular tutorial you can see here has like tons of different colors and and the price is about four dollars a bundle. This and this picture is how much hair I had left over. So I started with three full bundles three: full packages of hair, the black, the espresso and the honey light that light brown color. And so that was about twelve dollars plus a little extra for shipping. And you can see all the different bundles of hair that I have mixed at various stages. For my tutorial, and this is with out the two West's that I sold for the tutorial and you can see, there's a ton left and pretty much. This bundle of three hairs could probably make an estimated forty wefts, depending on how long you make them like how the length of the weft hair itself and the width like how much sewing you do. So just as my estimate I, when I was building Hager for the main, it took me three full bags of hair, I got about thirty two wets out of it and each of my wife's were about eight to twelve inches wide, and that was using. I cut. I cut the 48 inches from the bundle into about thirds, and so there you can see like huggers mane is quite large and full and long on his tail they're, probably around nine Wes. So you can see like these wefts. They go a long way. If you use them right and it's not that expensive to get the materials to use them a little for the tape a little for the the hair itself, some extra for maybe the the needle to buy that just once. And then the thread - and you can see like I estimate the full price for hoggers main that I spent to probably be around twenty-five dollars. Now in before the comments, there is a place that sells a fur that is very long. You can get it up to seven inches, I believe perhaps even longer the company is called national, fiber technology and they are in fact the only company in the world that makes a fur with a stretch back so their fur that they produce. That has the long hair on it is a really fantastic material. I haven't got any chance to work with the long stuff, yet I used some of the short stuff before on grains and hoggers face and it's fantastic I've seen other artists use it and it looks really cool. They have an outlet store where you can get the some discount stuff, but you can sometimes not find exactly what you're looking for as far as length and color. So this is a good alternative to that. This will save you a little bit of money and it'll be a lot more work, but it'll save you money and you can get the look you want without having to spend that. So it's, and sometimes when you're ordering from online places like that they have a clearance section. It'S it's like you can't order samples, you just have to go with it and it could not be the right texture. It could not be a whole bunch of stuff. So as fantastic as a nifty fur is, and I highly recommend looking at their stuff - this is still a great alternative to get long hair on your creatures. So thank you so much for watching tutorial. I really hope it helps you in your own projects. Personally, I really like the process of wetting, it's a cathartic for me, it's relaxing, I like it and I love the results, so I'm gon na keep doing on it. If you want to see more of the hugger bills, you can click the card right now and and you'll be taken to the playlist of all my videos. If you like this tutorial and want to see more, please subscribe and hit the bell so that you'll be notified. The moment that I post my next video, I'm fazool, reminding you to embrace your inner beast.