I’m new to shaving faux fur, and while I can use more practice, I want to share with you the method I used. This method solved my dilemma of finding the perfect match of a short pile faux fur/minky and a long pile faux fur. I watched several videos on YouTube and practiced on scraps of fur fabric before I dove in. I recommend doing the same.
What You Will Need:
- -Pair of clippers (I bought a pair from Sally’s, the employee told me she would never recommend what I bought to anyone who was cutting actual human hair, but thought they would work well for my project. She was right, they worked well and I didn’t spend $80+ on a nice pair of clippers)
- -Faux Fur Fabric
- -Oil for Your Clippers
- -Brush for Your Clippers
- -Length Guard for Your Clippers (if desired)
- -Vacuum
- -Patience for a Big Mess
Pre-Shave: Some of the fabric I shaved before I used it in my project…like the ears and eyelids. I think they would have been quite difficult to shave after they were sewn. To do this, lay the fabric flat on a table and run the clippers with the direction of the fur nap. Press the blade parallel to the fur, don’t go at an angle. Press and push the clippers through the fur. Use clipper guards if you don’t want the nap to be cut too short. Practice before you do this on the fur you need to use.
In the above image you can see I pre-shaved the fabric for the muzzle sides, chin and ears. The rest was left long until after the project was sewn and stuffed.
Stuff your project without the eyes. Safety pin in closed so you can easily un-stuff it after you have shaved the fur. Then add the eyes and re-stuff the project and stitch closed.
Also note that I made the direction of the nap on the face sides and gussets to flow toward the ears, this is important to help make shaving easier and so the mane that is left long also looks right.
To shave the nap of the faux fur, keep the blade of the clippers parallel with the shape of the project as much as possible. You may have to angle the blade a little to properly trim the curves. Do this a little at a time since you can always take more off, but putting it back on…well…I’ll address that below.
Use the clipper guards to blend the length of the face fur into the lion’s mane (or to the rest of the longer fur…like on the bear).
So…hiccups happen! I dipped into the fur nap at a little too much of an angle and shaved some of the fur too short. Since this piece is for decoration on the wall, it generally won’t be closely examined. Patching it up like this worked well and you can’t even tell. I put a small amount of Liquid Stitch® where I cut too close. I used some of the cut fur and gently pressed it into the glue and it covered up my blip well enough.
Sure…I need some more practice, but overall I am quite happy with the results on my bear and lion. The mess was atrocious, but well worth it. A little hand-held vacuum works great to clean up the fly away fuzzy cuts of fur. I saved some of the longer cuts of fur to use as stuffing in another project.
