PrillyCharmin's Dolls

40 Gauge Felting Needles
for ROOTING DOLL HAIR

This listing is for #40 gauge felting needles for micro rooting reborn dolls. There are 24 needles included. The 40 gauge needles are the popular size for micro rooting Reborn dolls. Felting needles are also popular for re-rooting vintage dolls.

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. Doll artists are using felting needles to root hair on their Reborn artist dolls. You can poke the felting needles into the head directly, but the needles will probably break more often.  It helps if you warm the doll's head with lightbulb inside, or some people heat up dry rice in the microwave and put a cloth bag of the warm rice inside (just be careful not to microwave it very long, the rice gets hot.) 

The 40 gauge needles have been popular for rooting lashes on Reborn dolls.  

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. Some ladies have told me they use a steam iron over a damp towel to steam the doll's hair - to make it lay down flat.

Then trim the hair as necessary when it is dry. The results are beautiful!

STRONGER. These particular felting needles are the best I have found because the barbed blade is shorter. The barbed section is the thinnest part and therefore the most delicate. Because this section is shorter on the needles you see here, it will not break as often or as easily. 

TRI-STAR? All of our felting needles have three sides on the barbed end. Some people have asked about Tri-Star needles... the tri-star needles also have a groove down each side of the barb. I assume the purpose for the groove is so there will be less resistance as the needle punctures the fabric. Our 40 gauge needles are so thin they don't need the groove, and there's no room for it on the tiny blade. Our 40 gauge needles don't come in "tri-star" because they are too delicate. 

GREAT VALUE. Felting needles do break more often when they are used with vinyl rather than cloth. That is why I provide twice as many needles for the price, than cloth crafters do. The needles are 40 gauge and 3 inches long. They come packaged in a small box for convenience.  

This listing includes:

Quantity 24 Felting Needles in 40 Gauge

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