Restoring G1 plushies?

[Elisto]

I have a G1 Bowtie plushie in bad shape. I've cleaned her and her body's decent enough, but her hair is unsalvageable: extremely frizzy, dry, and brittle, with large chunks cut out of both the mane and tail, all the way to the base.

I'm wondering if anyone has any experiences replacing the hair. I'm actually considering removing the hair entirely and sewing fabric hair instead, but I don't know if anyone's ever done that and can say how possible/difficult it may be to sew in new pieces.

[Elisto]

Anyone do any sort of repair or restoration on them?

[Skeen]

If you want to sew on fabric hair, it would be pretty easy, I'd think.    I've never done it but it seems plausible.  Would you do like 3D fabric hair, or more like Funrise fabric strips?

For 3D hair, just make your pattern and sew it as normal, then to attach it, I would cut the original hair as close to the head as possible, then tack the fabric hair over it, making sure to cover the original hair seam with the bottom part of the fabric.  That way there's no opening of seams or anything in the head. 

If you wanted to add new Dollyhair, you'd have to open up the original seam and remove the hair, then make a weft and insert it. 

[Elisto]

I was thinking about trying 3D fabric hair. I do sew often enough, but I've never tried anything like that, so I'm a little nervous about figuring out just how to do it. I'll need to look at some custom plushies I think to see how they do it. Sewing over the base of the hair is an interesting idea too. I was thinking I would have to take the seam out, which I don't think would be too much trouble to re-sew, but I'm not sure if that's really the best way to go. From what I can tell, it looks like the original thread holding the hair in is pretty thick stuff.

[Skeen]

It's decently thick.  I've removed a mane on a Firefly plushie to see how the weft was made and it was pretty easy to remove.  I just thought it would be easier not to remove any original stitching.  When I make plushies I tack the 3D hair onto the head so that way made sense to me.   

[Elisto]

When I make plushies I tack the 3D hair onto the head so that way made sense to me.   

Oh, good to know!

[hathorcat]

I have accidentally taken a Blossom Softie apart years ago - she had been de-stuffed in her past [something had chewed her toes off and removed almost all her stuffing]. Ok...I say "I"...I mean I made my mum who has the real sewing skills do it [I was her supervisor during the process].

As Skeen says the mane and tail are basically factory stitched into an internal strip/square of fabric which is then welded /stitched [I believe it varies] onto the back of the body fabric. You used to be able to buy hair which is factory stitched on to to fabric on some toy restoring websites but it was normally in natural hair colours rather than the shades you would want for MLP. Otherwise you would need to stitch the hair yourself on to a sturdy piece of fabric and then insert this into the seam on her head before closing the seam over the fabric basic in order to allow the hair to stick out of the seam but be supported in place by the internal fabric.

[Elisto]

OK, yeah, I don't plan on replacing it with regular doll/pony hair. That just seems like too much work just to get it to look normal, especially when I already have 2 other Bowties in nice shape.

I guess when I have time, I'll start on a pattern for fabric hair, although I'll have to figure out where to get the right fabric since I haven't seen anything that I think would work around here.