HOW TO SEW FAUX FUR: tips I learned at sewing school

Hello Darlings!

I don’t know what happened, but in the beginning of the year I started craving for a faux fur coat – never in my life have I thought of it before, and now I could not let this thought go away. On one hand, big fluffy fur coats are so not me, but on the other hand – it’s just a clothing piece, so why not have fun with it?

After my trip to fabric store, I picked some gorgeous long hair faux fur – I was amazed by the variety and quality of faux fur they have nowadays! From realistic looking ones, to crazy colored cut-out ones – it was hard to pick just one and I will probably be getting for some more next season!

One big big minus of sewing fur: hair gets everywhere, EVERYWHERE! Luckily, I sewn my at school (so no mess at home, yay!), yet I found some hair at car (how?).  Other than that, the whole thing was not very difficult to make and the coat came together pretty fast.

As you can see from the photos below – I looove the final result! Not only does this coat look luxurious (not bad for a 40 Euro price I paid for fabric, huh?), but is also extremely warm, which is a necessity in the winter like this! And while I am not sure if I will be wearing to work often (a bit to posh for everyday look, in my opinion), I will definitely keep it in the closet for days I want to dress-up!

 

 

 

Admittedly, this coat turned out to be one of the most fun sewing projects ever: fur is very different than any other fabric, so I was learning something new in every step of the process. Plus, I had my amazing teacher by my side the whole time, so I collected quite a few valuable tips on working with furs and I would like to share them here with you!

HOW TO SEW FAUX FUR

CUTTING THE FAUX FUR. When cutting faux fur, make sure you cut only with the tip of the scissors (cut mine with using not more than 1cm of the tip of the scissors). This will slow the process waaaay down (I cut my 7 piece coat 40 minutes – yikes!), but it will also reduce the damage on the hair to the minimum (see how nice the cut edge looks like?). This will not prevent from total hair-loss, but it will be much less of it.

 

CUT OUT THE DARTS. Shocking, I know, but you have to cut out the darts with zero seam allowance (!!!) and stitch it closed as shown (don’t mind the blue yarn I used – this is only to hold up the coat for first fitting). This move will eliminate the excess fur hair from the inside of the dart and make it invisible from the good side (to see how it looks like on the right side – can you notice where the dart is?)

SEAMS FOR SEWING FUR. While I will be using a dedicated machine for main stitching, but faux fur can be easily sewn with regular machine or by hand (in fact, my school got this machine only a week or so ago, so they were sewing lots of faux fur coats with regular machines prior to that!). If you are using a regular machine, use a semi-narrow zigzag stitch instead of straight stitch; if you are sewing by hand, your stitch should be like a photo below with blue thread, just neater and more narrow (the stitch the photo is only my fitting stitch, so don’t mind the color and imperfections). If you would use the dedicated machine, the stitch would look like the seam in my last photo. Last but not least: when sewing, make sure all the hair are neatly pushed to the right side of the garment and none of it is in the wrong side – this will create a wonderfully smooth fur on the right side and the seam will be absolutely invisible.

DON’T IRON THE FAUX FUR. If you use heat on the faux fur, it will loose it’s fluffyness and will not look good. I ironed a small piece to show the difference in the photo below – see how one side is much less fluffy than the other?

Because you shouldn’t iron-on the fusable interfacing onto faux fur, you can hand stitch piece of non-stretch fabric to the fron closure part, to prevent it from stretching out.

 

HOW TO INSTALL THE CLOSURES.  While you are welcome to use a variety of different closures, for this coat I choose to use a special dedicated closure, that contains a loop and a snap.

To install such closure, first take the part with snap, make 2 little cuts from the wrong side of the fabric and push both parts of the snap through it, so that they are visible on the good side, while main closure body remains inside (reffer to photos below).

 

Securely stitch the closure by hand (photo below). Repeat same actions on the other side of the closure with the loop part.

 

USE NON-STRETCHABLE RIBBON FOR SHOULDERS AND NECKLINE. While stitching together shoulder lines or neckline, put a non-stretchable ribbon (or a piece of fabric) to prevent these parts from stretching out – this will prolong the durability of the coat and it will keep its form longer.

Here are main tips I learned at school for working with faux fur – other than these points, you can sew faux fur coat just as a regular coat!

Hope these steps were helpful and I highly recommend making a faux fur coat – it’s definitely a very fun project!

Best wishes,

Julie