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Viergacht — Faux Fur Tutorial
Published: 2011-09-21 02:38:51 +0000 UTC; Views: 19505; Favourites: 372; Downloads: 161
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Description
Faux fur comes in a bewildering variety of colors, textures and price, and when you start out making stuffed animals it can be hard to figure out what to buy and what to avoid.This is a brief visual guide to how to distinguish good fur from bad.
EDIT: Noticed a couple of spelling errors, but for me that's not too bad. You can still figure out what I mean.
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Comments: 51
Same here. It practically fell apart as I was sewing it, and the poor teddy bear ended up looking like roadkill LOL
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xDD Yeah it's a shame such kind of fur even exists! Can ruin hours of work...
I did a wolf with that fur (not uploaded yet...) with a little spot on the sides which I sewed in. Later I saw it was ripped apart on one side -__-
But for now I used a different technique with which the fur doesn't rip apart and it worked! :3
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I ended up using my crap fur to make cat beds and stuff. Had to reinforce it medium weight interfacing, but at least it wasn't totally wasted!
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THAT is a great idea!!! I have 2 kitties^^''
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I have 5 (plus a foster kitten)
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Can you recommend any quality faux fur retailers online? If so that would be great.
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I've had a lot of success with imstuffedfurs.com and mendels.com
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You're welcome! It took me a while to learn back when I was starting out, so I really wanted to pass on the hard-earned info.
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thank you so much for making this helpful guide! I am about to start plushie-making and this saves me a lot of trouble! <3 you are the best!
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Glad to know it helped!
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Do you have some examples for shops where you can buy good fur?
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I get mine from a couple of different places - Jo Ann and Hancock Fabrics for box stores, online fabric.com, mendels.com and imstuffedfur.com
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very nice tutorial, now when I go shopping for my furs I know what to look out for
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Awesome! Thank you for this, now I can go back to the store I found fur at and decide if it's worth the money!
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...If ONLY I had found this BEFORE I made some paws.~ >:I
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Wait, wait
Two days ago I went on a spree in a fabric shop and picked up some faux fur for the first time, kind of curious about what it's like to work with. Then I stumbled onto this, got curious and decided to check my fur.
It seems like everything is on the quality side, except that the back looks like the picture of the knit backing - what's up with that? Have I managed to find a quality fur with knit backing? Or is it actually crappy fur, and I've got an untrained eye?
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Even the good quality furs can have a knit backing. As long as it isn't too stretchy or fraying you should be fine. It's mostly important the fur doesn't shed too much and that you can't see through it to the backing (unless you're doing something like trying to reproduce an threadbare antique teddy bear look). If you're still unsure, feel free to take a couple of pictures and note me, I can take a look.
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Oh, I see. It's not like I have any grand projects planned for it, but I got a bit worried anyway!
It's a little stretchy, but I can't see anything through...Unless the black knitting blends really well with the black roots in the fur, haha. Didn't shed much, even when I tugged at it, (at least in comparison to some fuzzy luxury fleece i used that shed little fleece bits EVERYWHERE...) so I guess it's fine? I'm glad my fur (hopefully) won't make my already bad sewing look worse. Ahah.
I do admit I'm a bit shaky on the subject still, so maybe I'll note you some pictures tomorrow? (It's 1 am as I'm writing this, asdfbsbhkjks)
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That sounds like pretty good fur, it should be OK. I'd still be glad to look at any pics you want to send
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Uck, cheap fur. It also FEELS cheap, it's an offense to my hands. I buy up (cheap) remnants of quality fur whenever I find them even if I think it's a color I don't need, I can always sell it or will find a use SOME day! :'3
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Yup, and you never know when some crazy color is going to be exactly what you need.
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If only I'd been able to read this years ago- spent so much time making plushies from terrible fun fur and wondering why they came out terrible looking. Though to be honest, letting 13 year old me have the good fur would have been expensive- I tended to have a problem with all my plushies coming out crazy huge back then.
Anyway, this tutorial is very useful. I personally don't have a problem with high-quality furs with a knitted back, I suppose you get used to the way it stretches after a while and it can be used to your advantage.
I've recently bought some lovely fabric from this site; [link] it's based in the UK, sells mohair fabrics as well as high quality faux furs. They're pretty expensive but really lovely. I think they also have an ebay shop!
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Same here, just wanted to pass along some advice.
You're right about the good quality knitted fur, of course, but this is just a sort of introduction, quick & dirty guide. I've used it but you do have to be really careful how you lay out your pattern.
That site looks awesome - too bad I'm in the US. I'd love to try that orangutan fur!
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I think most of the stuff on their site is imported by them from the US- I'd keep an eye out for it!
But yeah, this guide is great. I'm sure it'll be a lot of help to people- I feel sorry for people who make lovely things out of "fun fur"!
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Where are some of the places you order fur from? I live in Arkansas so there is almost nowhere to buy something like that around where I live. I've been looking for a good place to order some fur for a costume I want to make.
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mendels.com
distinctivefabric.com
imstuffedfur.com
crscraft.com
fabric.com (people have been having issues with wrong fur/badly packed fur, so buyer beware)
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Thanks, that's a great list there!
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Ooooh, thanks for this guide!
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I have a question.
Say I was making a plush that had a wire 'skeleton' for poseability, and a sculpey head and paws. How would I adhere the fur to the sculpey without it looking unnatural?
Take [link] [link] and [link] for example.
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Do you mean, so you can't see the cut edge of the fur? I only tried this once and I didn't have a camera at the time so there aren't pictures, but what I did was make a shallow groove along the edge of the sculpey piece, put a little glue in and stick the edge of the fur into that.
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I mean, how do I adhere the fur to the clay, especially around the back of the clay head?
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Use a glue like E-6000.
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I have no clue what that is, where can I get it, and what does it look like?
I have a glue-gun, which was my first idea of what to use, but I don't want to half-ass this.
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You'd probably be better off using google than asking me LOL
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Oh, well you've helped a lot. Thank you very much!
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Wonderful, thank you very much for this good explanation, I added it to my collection of helpful links right away! [link]
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could you recommend a good place to buy fox colored fur?
Please?
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There are several places online, the selections are always changing -
mendels.com
distinctivefabric.com
imstuffedfur.com
crscraft.com
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No prob. Good luck with your project!
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Man, this is something I had to learn the hard way. I will say, though, that good fur can often be found for cheaps right after Halloween at Walmart.
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I had to learn the hard way, too. My first couple of efforts looked like they had mange XD
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