Wool Dread Extensions: Part 1

Here is the start of my felted roving dread adventure. I haven’t ever made dreads before, either synthetic or wool, but I love the way dreads look. The last extensions I had were pretty long for my tastes (32 inch double ended dreads, so 16 inches once they are folded over). I thought this time I would try short little dreads to see how that looked. They are going to be roughly 17 inch double ended dreads, so about 8.5 inch dreads once they are installed. I am going to make the majority of them skinny (about 1/4 of roving width I got) with some larger ones (1/2 of the roving width) so there is some variety. I will eventually dye them brown to (hopefully) match my hair. I was thinking of dying a few red to mix in there too. I am also going to experiment on a few dreads with needle felting designs on them. It should be a fun experiment!

Anyway, here are some of my photos…I am going to try and document the whole thing. Please feel free to leave me comments!

Splitting the roving. I have already pre cut most of them (probably all of them). I think that 70 DE dreads should be enough to fill up my head. I still don’t know if I am going to leave any bangs.

After soaking it in a bowl of hot soapy water (I used a ancient bar of Dial and shaved some off with a potato pealer) I started felting. Here is an action shot. I found that pulling the hair out before rolling it worked well. Also, rewetting and rolling again seemed to get them tighter.

Here are three finished dreads, one that is 1/2 the roving, and the other two are 1/4. I also rolled them on my lap after dipping them one more time in the soapy water. I seemed to get water all over the place with all the palm rolling… oh well.

Here is a small one for a size comparison.

Okay, tell me what you think!!!