Project Fail: Rapunzel Wig

 

Every had an idea that sounded soooo cool in theory just to have it not only fall short of your expectations but fail miserably?  I was considering not even sharing this attempt, but it's real and I'm a tiny bit heartbroken about the whole thing :)

Bug LOVES the movie Tangled.  Like we watch it or have it on in the background while we play EVERY day.  So much so that I have a bit of a voice crush on Flynn Rider.  There were so many cool ideas for Rapunzel wigs in the blogosphere.  I was inspired by this tutorial at Sew Like My Mom and this tutorial at This Mama Makes Stuff .  The project seems pretty foolproof right?  

Well then the stashbusting part came into play.  I don't have golden yarn for long Rapunzel tresses.  My oh-so-cool-and-creative idea was to use t-shirts from my upcycle pile and a pair of outgrown tights to make my own version of her wig.  I even got so excited about my idea that I took the time to take pictures of my process.

I cut my shirts into 1/4" strips using my rotary cutter and ruler.  then STRETCHED them as far as they could go.  The first shirt is one of the thin rib knit t-shirts that doesn't have much recovery, so it stretched beautifully and gave me nice long strands.  The tank top had a lot more elasticity, so it recovered a lot more, making for shorter strands.

 Do you see the same problem I saw?  These two yellow shirts did not yield nearly enough hair for a proper Rapunzel wig.

 So I branched out into my fabric stash and found this yellow tube knit that I got for free eons ago.  It was thrown in a package of fabric I bought so that the lady could get it out of her her stash.  I cut the entire yard of fabric into yellow strips and stretched them out.  What I did not foresee was the VERY unpleasant side effect that these stretched out strands would SHED teeny tiny puffy yellow balls of fuzz everywhere.

 Aside from that, I was pretty sure that I had enough strands of hair to make a proper wig now.

So I went to work at the hat made from tights in the 2nd tutorial I shared, and sewed on the strands in the method of the first tutorial I shared, and eventually all of the strands were attached to the hat and sewed down so that you couldn't see the tights hat underneath as much.  Decided that Tangled was the perfect name for the film and for the mess that was the wig after Bug ran around wearing it for a minute.  I untangled the mess and braided the wig, much to the disappointment of Bug.  We also had to add an elastic band around the edge of the hat that would grip Bug's head a bit better so that I wasn't putting it back on her head every 72 seconds.

I was going to add some felt flowers, but I felt completely done with spending my valuable crafting time on this failed project.  Bug loves wearing her "weally looooong Wapunzel hairs", but leaves a trail of teeny tiny puffy yellow balls of fuzz behind her.  Maybe we should be playing Hansel and Gretel instead?