How to make beautiful hair. Part 1.

Making the hair look very beautiful can be a challenge. I use Mohair yarn for many dolls (Alice and most Jazzy dolls). For Dora the Explorer and Kevvy I used acrylic yarn. Mohair is very thin and very good for making hair. It is best to use the thinnest yarn as possible. Thinner yarn makes smaller knots and spreads better: the hair will not stand out. It is much more work, but the result is worth it. 

I have made hair using the whole 4ply yarn (Fingering) and I have split the 4 ply yarn to thinner strands (see photos below).

Split strands for Little Red Riding Hood.

The thinner strands use less yarn than the whole 4 ply yarn and it looks nicer too. When you use yarn which is smaller than the yarn for the doll, you can use a smaller hook to get the yarn through the stitches. You can read how to insert the hair on the head on EssHaych blog.

Sometimes I create a hair cap in the color of the hair. Do this when you cannot insert a lot of hair strands. The hair cap gives a full look and hides the bold spots. For the Pippi doll I could not use many strands: otherwise the braids would be very big. To hide the bold spots she has a red hair cap. (See photo left of the haircap for Pippi).

Pippi Longstocking

Instead of adding a hair cap you can also change the color of the head to the hair color. This I did with Jazzy the Mermaid and Nurse Jazzy. (This does not show on the photos below.)

Nurse Jazzy and Jazzy the Mermaid

Next:
How to make beautiful hair. Part II.
How to choose hook size and yarn