24 #36 Gauge Felting Needles for Rooting Reborns

#36 gauge felting needles for rooting. 24 needles.( Two dozen..).This is our most popular size for rooting for reborning dolls or replacing doll's hair.

INDUSTRY USES. Felting Needles are used in factories to make plush fabrics, textured upholstery, carpets and many other specialty fabrics. The needles are laid out in beds, just like the proverbial bed of needles that the holy men have been rumored to lie upon in India. The needles are barbed, besides being very thin and sharp, so you can imagine how comfortable that would be.

FOR HANDCRAFTING. Felting needles have been used by crafters to make handcrafted felt projects such as plush animals, fancy pillows and even dramatic textured hats and garments. Felting needles have also been used to root the hair on beautiful artistic cloth dolls. The crafters push the hair threads into the fabric and the barbs on the needles will tangle the hair threads on the other side of the fabric, so it is "knotted" and will stay in place. This makes it much easier to root a head of hair on a cloth doll.

FOR RE-ROOTING DOLL HAIR. Felting needles are useful for rerooting hair on vinyl dolls which have lost their hair for some reason. Push the replacement hair into the empty hair plugs, poking the felting needle up and down so the strands of replacement hair will "knot" inside the doll's head. Sometimes I push the hair into the head using the blunt end of a broken felting needle, then I push a good needle into the hole and plunge up and down for a bit to knot the threads, then push some more hair into the hole with the blunt needle, and repeat the process until each hole in the doll's head is filled.

GET A GRIP. Rooting hair is a tedious process but the felting needles are the best solution I have ever heard of. If your fingers get a little sore, I have found it is easier to grip the felting needle if I wrap a small rubber band around the end of it and this helps me get a better hold on the needle too.

FOR ROOTING REBORN DOLLS. I've heard that some doll artists are using the felting needles to root hair on their Berenguer reborn artist dolls. You can poke the felting needles into the head directly, but the needles will probably break more often. To save your felting needles from destruction, you may want to drill a series of holes in the doll's head first using the smallest gauge drill bit, and then use the felting needles to fill the holes with doll hair. One doll artist told me this is what she does.

STYLE HAIR WHEN FINISHED. After the head is rooted, then I wet the hair down with warm water, comb it in the desired style, and put a nylon knee high stocking over the doll's head like a hair net until the hair is dry. Then trim the hair as necessary when it is dry. The results are beautiful!