Tips and Tricks for Working with Fur

I had originally posted this as an album on my facebook profile.  Those of you that have seen it before my profoundest apologies.  I put this together while working on my velvet coat.  I do know there are people out there that prefer to hand sew all fur.  I applaud you for your great patience in doing so.  For those of us that prefer to use a sewing machine to speed up the process feel free to try out some of these things that I found helpful.

Most good quality fur has to come from a specialty store, and for most of us that means ordering online. This is just a helpful bit of advise on never trusting the colors of a picture you saw online. Always see if you can get a swatch before making a purchase. Fur is a pricy investment, so you should be happy with what you order. Swatches also allow you to feel how smooth or coarse the fur will be.

When cutting the fur you always want to cut one layer at a time. You need to be careful not to cut the fur, but the fabric backing. This will take longer then cutting other fabrics.

Shear away the fur in the seam allowance. (Sorry the picture isn't that great. It is really difficult to see.)

Adjust the level on the pressure foot for your sewing machine. Not all machines have it listed like mine does in the manual. Newer ones will have different fabric settings, and the machine will automatically adjust the tension for you. I have yet to see a "fur" setting on a machine, but find a setting that works for you.
  

Pull the fur away from the seams while sewing them. This will make sewing the seams take a lot more time, but it will be worth it in the end. I have also heard that hand stitching seams together will prevent the fur from slipping and stretching. I haven't tried this out, but thought I would throw it in here. All of these seams were short enough that the fur didn't slip or stretch, but I can see a useful application to doing this on longer seams when sewing two pieces of fur together.

 After you have completed the seam us a wire brush to pull any fur out of the seams. I picked mine up at a hardware store during grilling season. Wire brushes are used to clean grills as well, so they can be found with the barbeques and other grilling accessories.