Making a Mess of Fur

Today was a very good stay-inside day. The morning started off with a bit of sleet and then golly oh my that strangest of Austin happenings: snow! Which in terms of current worldwide weather is a bit of a joke, and it only lasted an hour, but no one drives on these rare occasions. So this weekend became a marathon of coat-cutting, and as some of you know, that can seem to go on endlessly. It’s such a good feeling to have it all done.

Ya know, I don’t know what to call this coat in future posts. The Grandma Coat? The Luxe Coat? And black is so difficult to photograph!

There was some minor gory-ness in cutting the persian lamb fabric. I knew it was going to shed and my lint roller wasn’t enough to keep up. Time to dig out the old Dustvac from deep storage–it looks like someone went crazy with an electric razor around here!

I was taking a risk cutting such plushy fabric in two layers, but I simply don’t have enough room to cut from one layer. The hardest part was getting my chalk to show up on the woven backing. As an experiment I tried pinning tissue paper on top for a few of the pieces, then tracing the pattern on that and cutting the whole thing as one. I’ve done this with silk before, and it seams to help with cutting accuracy.

The hardest part is going to be keeping this from shedding all over the machine. Hmm, I wonder if I should serge the edges of the pieces? I’m already going to have to take my scissors apart and clean them now since all the “fur” got in those.

Next I’m going to baste in some interfacing for the hems–perhaps just plain muslin–since I’m worried about crushing the pile using fusible. And I’ll do a few sewing tests to see how it feeds. There are some fabrics that just don’t want to feed evenly and this is probably one of them. I have a walking foot that came with my old machine but it’s so very bulky, so I might baste the pieces first to keep them lined up with a regular foot. I am so not a basting fan, but this might be the time for me to become one!

Tomorrow I’ll share some about cutting and fusing leather. Till then!

4 comments

  1. Lizz says:

    Sounds like such a fun project! I was eyeing some gorgeous Tisavel faux fur on Emma One Sock this winter but I was too slow and it sold out before I could buy it. I’d love to make something with fur/faux fur one of these days so I’m hoping that next winter she’ll stock it again!

  2. Alison says:

    Turn your shed mess blonde, and that’s what I cleaned up this week after Austin and Emerson took my sewing scissors to their hair. E styled herself into a proper mullet.

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