D.I.Y Colorful Faux Fur Jacket
Helloo everyone! I hope your “New Year” is going amazing and as planned so far! I’m back with a D.I.Y that I’m so in love with! lol I first saw this colorful faux fur type of jacket (pictured left) on nastygal.com a couple weeks ago for $168 and my first thought was “damn.. Can I make that??” lol It wasn’t the price so much that turned me off, I just didn’t care for the collar and the arms looked a little short. I have long arms, which is another reason I like to sew my own clothes..
As soon as I saw it, I went to search for the fabric and found a fabric that was pretty similar! Mines is just more of a stripe and the other one is more like patchwork. I got this fabric and another surprise fabric I’ll be using for my next D.I.Y to make a cardigan! So exciting!
Now I do want to apologize, because I started sewing this jacket at night and the flash on my camera is broken right now. So I didn’t take any pictures of the cutting/sewing process.. However, I did use McCall’s pattern M7257 for this jacket. I did not want a collar on mines, I followed view D for this jacket.
The decision to make this coat was pretty impulsive. Sort of like an I see it, I like it, I make it type of thing.. lol I have never sewn with faux fur at all. lol I just figured I could do it and truly when I get in that mindset and “figure” I can make/do something I ABSOLUTLEY MUST figure out how and most of the time I do! lol I already had this pattern on hand, I bought the fabric, did the research on how to sew with faux fur and just made it. Thank you to all the blogs and people that made posts and videos about sewing with faux fur!
According to my research, when sewing with faux fur the most important rules are:
- never cut it on the fold and cut pattern pieces from the backside of the fabric
- make small snips when cutting to eliminate fur everywhere
- use pattern weights
- make sure the fur is laying in the right direction when cutting it
- tuck the hairs inside while sewing, and always pin.
- Pluck hairs out of the seams when done sewing to make them invisible
- if you want/need to press use medium heat because the fur can melt
This particular faux fur was a short pile fur which means the hairs on it aren’t very long so it wasn’t as difficult as thought it would be.. My one hassle was the sleeves! I did read not to do a set in sleeve, when sewing faux fur somewhere online but that’s what the pattern said to do, so I figured it would be easy. For me it was just too bulky to sew the armhole all the way around on my machine. So I sewed what I could and did the rest by hand. The other thing I learned when sewing faux fur is to always cut your lining a little bigger or very precise otherwise you will have problems when trying to flip it out. Learning mishaps aside I really like this jacket, its colorful, its fun, it didn’t take forever to sew, it has pockets, and you can dress it up or down! Now go get you some faux fur and D.I.Y.
