Archive for the ‘Working with Fur’ Category

I’ve been working on two bears for a woman in IL. The fur is an absolutely beautiful dark mink–nearly black. It is probably one of the prettiest furs I’ve worked with. However, when working with dark fur it can be hard to distinguish the facial features as much. Not only does the fur have a shine that distracts from the details, but the dark color tends to de-emphasize seams. As a result, it can be difficult to get a good expression on the face of a bear made completely out of dark fur.

I gave the woman a choice of having me create the whole bear from the fur she sent or making a two-toned bear using some lighter mink I had on hand.

I initiall suggested that the face be done in the lighter mink and the muzzle be in the darker mink. However, she asked me to make the head dark with a light muzzle instead.

I was very pleased with the way the bears turned out in the end.

Sally had a number of fur items including a 3/4 length dark muskrat fur coat, two blond mink stoles and a couple of mink collars (one mid-tone, one more grey in color). She wanted seven bears for her grandchildren.

There wasn’t enough fur from any one garment to make all seven bears from. At first I thought about trying to get seven bear bodies from the coat and do contrasting muzzles from the stole. Although I might have been able to get five bears from the coat, I couldn’t get seven full bear bodies. That meant I was not going to be able to get seven identical bears from the fur.

So, I decided to work at getting seven different bears (no two bears of the same color combination). By making two-toned bears and mixing up the furs, each bear is individual. In addition, I was able to take advantage of the different linings as part of the mix. Ultimately, I used nearly all of the fur sent me to create these babies.

I did have to cheat a bit. I needed one extra contrast fur so I added some black mink I had on hand for one of the bears. However, the black lining material on that bear came from one of the stoles.

Theodora wanted two bears from her Silver Fox coat for her granddaughters. This was my first opportunity to work with Silver Fox so I was excited to get this project.

The hide was extremely thin and held stable with some older fused interfacing. Without the interfacing, the hide tore like thin paper. The first thing I needed to do was re-enforce the hide with a stronger facing.  Normal interfacing does not stick well to animal hide. I’ve found one brand that works well for most hide in good condition, but this one needed more adhesive so I added more adhesive to the interfacing. My initial tests worked well so I set to making the bears.

As I got into the project, I did run into a little trouble with a couple of the pattern pieces. There were a couple of seams in the hide that were just too weak to hold up to the stress of sewing and turning. I ended up re-doing one head because the muzzle split. After I turned one of the bodies and started to attach the arms, the front pannel started to give way and crumbled so I had to re-cut and sew the body again. Then, while working on the joint of the last leg, a section of the leg separated from the interfacing and ripped. I had to cut and sew another leg. However, once I got that leg attached, I realized that I had accidentally put the joint in on the wrong side and the leg was backwards. So, I ended up cutting and sewing a third leg.

By the time I finished, I had two pretty stable, absolutely adorable bears from Silver Fox.