Tutorial: Burgundy Dread Wig & How We Made It
These instructions are rather specific to the materials we had on hand when making this wig, but you can apply bits of this tutorial to your own projects as well. We've included additional suggestions for how to go about making a wig like this from your own supply of materials.
Materials
- A wig with bangs. Any fiber or style will work because you'll be cutting most of the hair off, and you won't be dreading any of the wig hair.
- About 50 pencil-thick double-ended dreads.
- About 20 super thick single-ended dreads.
- Rubber bands
- Thread (sewing thread or weaving thread will work)
Instructions
- The wig started out shoulder length, wet-look and wavy, with
side-swept bangs. It is #1B/off black with burgundy streaks. Start by
braiding your double-ended dreads very sparsely throughout the wig. Use
the tracks of hair that are already there and make sure to leave the
bangs loose in the front. To make braiding easier, cut the wig hair
down to about 4-5" in length. We recommend cutting each section
individually; its quicker to do it this way than to try trimming the
entire wig at once, since you'd have to layer it to get every single
piece of hair on it the same length.
You need to do this first round of dreads very spaced out because wigs have a lot of hair up at the front and the wefts are more spaced out in the back, so if you just do normal sectioning by the amount of hair available, you end up with a ton of dreads in the front of the wig and lots of gaps in back.
- Once the first bunch of DEs are braided in, start threading more DEs
through any bare spots. Concentrate on the top and back of the head;
since the dreads will hang down, they will cover up any gaps on the
sides, and it helps prevent the wig from having too many dreads on the
sides and bottom and makes it look more natural.
To do this, poke a hole through the sections that already have dreads in them and slip additional dreads through. Then, rubber band the new dreads together at the top to prevent them from slipping out.
- Since we wanted the back of the burgundy wig to be full and have
lots of volume, we saved the thick SEs for last. Knot 3-5 SEs together
with a piece of thread (about 4 strands should be sufficient), then pull
the thread through the wig cap and knot the bunches of dreads onto the
wig.
Here's a back view to show where all the big chunky dreads are:
And here's the finished product:
Jan 6th 2008