Blocking A Lace Wig

As you can guess, lace wigs are very fragile and need to be handled with a lot of care and time. In our lesson with Lottie, we learnt how to pin a galloon to a manikin head, helping to hold the lace wig we were working on in place.

 

Pinning the lace wig to the block is probably the most important thing to get right. You need to make sure that it's central and inline with the ears, eyes and were the forehead should start. Each wig is made for a certain person, so not every wig will fit everyone or every block. Sometimes you need to add some padding in between the wig and the block itself to get the right head shape. No lace wig is styled on the model, it's always done before on the block then placed on the model to finish off any last minute bits.

 

In order to pin the wig down properly, you need these things;

Galloon

Pins

Water & spray bottle

Padding

 

 

So firstly, you make sure that everything is central with your wig, otherwise once you've styled it and placed it on your model, it'll be wonky. You need to spray the lace with water and use the padding to smoothen it down against the block to ensure its straight and neat. The galloon is basically just a thin ribbon that you place around the edge of the lace on the wig. You need to also dampen this galloon before placing it again the lace. You need to find the middle of the lace, in line with where the nose would be, and start pinning the galloon in place from there. When putting the pins in, make sure that you place them in a zig zag style to ensure a very secure structure. Make sure you keep the hair out of the way otherwise it may get pinned down by accident. Pin all the way along the lace line, right to the ears and round. Then, with the spare galloon left over, bring it round to the front of the block and pin down, crossing over the two ends.  

 

 

Unfortunately, I forgot to take pictures when pinning down the galloon, as I was concentrating too much!  However, I do have this picture that shows what I've been talking about. Once the front lace is pinned in place, you need to get yourself some bigger and thicker pins. Place these larger pins at the bottom of the wig right in the bottom corners to hold the back of the wig in place. You will also need to place a few pins in the middle to hold the top in place. This is something that you need to judge on your own, if something feels loose, place a pin in it.