The magic of mohair started for us when we purchased our beautiful grazing property in a small valley in the mountains in southern Queensland, named Rockvale. The rocky outcrops and huge boulders were ideal for our Angora Goats, and they never ceased to amaze us with their incredible agility even at a very early age. Yadeno Fibrecraft was born approximately11 years ago, when I started supplying mohair to friends for their cloth dolls. It wasn’t long before I too became addicted to this very absorbing craft. Like most doll makers, I have a background of sewing and other crafts, and soon discovered that doll making could incorporate many other forms of handcrafts. Colour, texture, and the challenge to create a beautiful or crazy doll is probably our real love with this craft.

Being part of the cloth doll world during these years of growth has been a very exciting time for us, and we still take much pleasure in supporting doll clubs and helping doll makers to understand and enjoy using mohair.

Mohair comes from the Angora goat, which has its origins in Angora, Turkey, and having spent 18 years with these interesting creatures we soon learnt that goats seem to have kept their natural instincts to survive. They move very quickly, and if not watched, some will carefully work out, on their run to the shearing shed, exactly where to jump a fence, or how to crawl under it, or how to disappear quickly behind a tree or huge boulder so that they can get away. However teach them that their favourite food comes from a bucket, and you will have their complete attention.

Our transition into dolls’ hair was fairly easy, as I had learnt basic classing and to handle mohair. Being a spinner, I had also learnt to clean and dye many fibres. Mohair was my favourite, and it is lovely carded with other fibres for spinning, or spun on its own for knitting beautiful shawls.

The strength, solftness, and lustre of this beautiful fibre makes it suitable for mens’ suits, warm winter wear, and it is woven with other fibres into fine fabrics for the creation of beautiful designer clothing. The stronger older mohair has, for many years, been used to stuff saddles for horses.

Australian Angora breeders have been producing Mohair for many years, during which time the breed in Australia has improved remarkably, and it is now a much sought after fibre Internationally. The fibre is a hair similar to human hair, so hair spray and small amounts of hair conditioners can be used. Mohair like silk is a very lustrous fibre, and will dye beautifully. I believe the lovely colours and lustre give my dolls life.

Every 6 months, Angora goats are shorn the same way as sheep. It takes one month to grow 1 inch of mohair if the goats are fed and cared for properly, and a lot of extra time and care is needed to produce hair longer than 7 inches. So it is easy to understand why I shudder all over when a customer tells me to send super long hair so it can be cut to the length required.

We started with about 12 plain colours, and gradually over the years have removed some, added new colours, and spent a lot of time experimenting to create others. At the moment we have about 120 colours in our range. Our Rainbow colours were first created when, not long after we started to produce our mohair for dolls, an Australian Doll Designer, Lynn Butcher, created her lovely mermaid, Laura. Lynn asked if we could create some mermaid hair colours to suit the panne velvet used for the doll. I was having so much fun with these colours, I created 15, and we are still re-producing 12 of the original colours.

During the early years of Yadeno Fibrecraft, we were encouraged and supported by many craft businesses, doll designers, and doll makers, for which we will always be grateful. We could always follow on a map where Patti Culea was teaching throughout the USA, as class organisers would contact us for hair. When vinyl dolls became popular, they gave us the opportunity to incorporate more natural looking hair colours into our range.

With so many different lengths in mohair fleeces, we decided to sell the hair in 3 different lengths so all the staples in each packet of hair were reasonably uniform. Our hair is thoroughly scoured and washed, dried in the sun, then dyed. It is then placed into baskets ready to be packaged. Each fleece when growing on the goat divides into staples, and it is these staples that we pull out of the fleece one at a time to check to make sure they are clean. The whole process is very labour intensive, so we appreciate the ladies who over the years, have, or still work with us.

If you are wondering what our name Yadeno means, spell it backwards and you have it. Aren’t we all going to do or finish something “one day”? We hope you enjoy our beautiful website, mohair and other fibres, and visit us again soon. Happy Dollmaking and Fibre Crafting, Lee Digweed.