Usually I make my hairpieces from braiding hair most often by making my own weft or by adding hair to a mesh(rug hook fashion) but this time I’m taking a wig apart. Most modern wigs are made by adding rows of weft to a skull cap or along rows of elastic lace. This was one of those types so to reclaim the weft I just needed to cut the lace to separate the weft then undo the stitching to remove the short sections of lace.
This is the final product packages up, two 3 sausage curl hairpieces on the outside of the box and two 5 curly short bangs wefts in the center, in the white package on top are some toupee clips so the short bangs can be customized to fit the hairstyle. The way weft works is that it can be cut so, this set of short curls could be shortened to 4 curls or even three each side.
Taking only a few inches of the wig apart I got more than what I needed for both. This is a section of weft I used for one of the short curly bangs, most of the weft sections were longer.
Medium sausage curls
The first thing I did was to get enough hair for three curls. To get enough hair in the area covered by two toupee clips I needed to sew five or 6 lengths of weft together folding them back and forth in a wide zig-zag. To keep the top edge from getting too thick, I sewed the weft one right after another so none of the weft stitching overlapped. See below. To the left is one curled and one up curled hairpiece each are the same except for the curling and are make as described above.
These are the same hairpieces seen from the back so you can see the toupee clips.
Setting the hairpieces for sausage curls
I used three bendable curlers, wrapping 1/3 of the hair down the middle length of each curler. Near the end I added tissue paper over the hair to keep the hair in place while it is being steamed. Straight pins are really necessary to hold things together. I pinned the tissue paper strips to the curlers at the beginning and end of the wrap. Then I used pins to hold the curlers together as well. These are glass headed pins but I think that even plastic pins could stand 2 minutes in the steamer. The curlers were then bended to help them fit into the steamer.
How it looked after it was steamed for 2 minutes and tossed into the freezer for another 2 minutes from the backside. This type of low temp synthetic hair relaxes on heating and sets on cold shock. I used to steam it for something like 5 minutes which it too long. The hair turns gray with too much heat 2 minutes is perfectly good.
First I straighten out the curlers then remove the pins and tissue paper before I can slide the hair off the curler.
When the curlers are slipped out the curls look like this.
These curlers come in lots of different diameters. You can cover them with heavy plastic wrap it helps the curls slide out easier. I just did not do that this time. The wrap can be left on the curlers so no need to wrap them each time.
Small curly bangs
I used one of my pressing hams covered in plastic wrap as a base for the curly bangs. I used a 6″ lengths of single weft for the two pieces both pinned to the ham.
I set the entire length of weft on some new curlers I have never used. They had a very small diameter so I slipped some tubing over them to increase that. I used lots of pins to keep things in a row and to keep the weft down. When they came out of the steamer/fridge treatment I cut the hair down to about 4 inches that gave me about 2-3 spirals around the curl.
I reset them this time with tissue paper. I used lots of pins here as well.
This is how they looked after I took the curlers away. Also the box that these curlers come in. I love the elastic straps it made setting a little easier.
I added the toupee clips before setting the sausage curls, I did not do that with these curls. I think that the string of curls should be customized before adding them to the clips. Above you can see one of the sets where I added some knife pleats to the weft to shorten the distance between the curls. This could be sewn while sewing the toupee clips. Or of course you could clip the weft and separate to curls to shorten the strand and keep the distance between each curl.