Wigs Making a wig with natural yarn?

Look into teeswater. It's a wavey/crinkled natural fiber and pretty inexpensive compared to brushed long natural fibers. You can find like 50g of already dyed teeswater for $10 on etsy for example. Individual teeswater strands would look about the same as unraveled natural fiber yarn.

 

Buy the fiber rather than yarn. Mohair doesn't have much wasteage. Or go for soy, silk, ramie etc. Much less faff than unravelling or brushing out yarn

 

I can't vouch for natural fiber yarn, but I have found that using super bulky acrylic yarn can produce almost no waste. By cutting to the desired length then separating the top and gluing as a weft like normal, depending on the yarn you get a really silky look without having to brush it out or straighten it. But as mentioned above, you would probably be better off looking at loose fiber if you want it to be natural.

 

Human hair dye can be used to dye mohair since it's a natural fiber. I've used this many times. The only issue is that the color may be harder to get right since mohair typically starts with a white or at least very light base color, and most human hair dye assumes blonde or brown as the starting color.

 

Making wigs from yarn made from natural fibers or part natural fibers can totally be done. the fiber might be a bit short for an SD doll though.

The way I've used is to untwist the strands so you are working with one ply. To get an idea of the strand length and see if that works for what you have in mind, take a piece of the one ply and hold it in both hands and pull it apart. Then take that piece and do the same until the strands are all about the same length. Bundle up a bunch of those strands into a grouping that is big enough to work with but flattens out enough to so the glue can go all the way through the end of the proto-weft. If this looks good make wefts and assemble as for whatever directions you are following.

I have seen a couple of doll wigs that have very fine small braids and they seem to be done by actually braiding many, many very small braids and gluing them down one at a time or in small groups. Sadly I can't remember where to find any tutorials for this.

My pearl's wig was made with natural yarn wefts and the one ply pull-apart method:
Pre-faceup Pearl by M C, on Flickr

 

Oh, well if you've got it may as well use it! I dyed some mohair with RIT the other day and it worked well, have also used acid dyes with great results