The Unlucky Fox is on to the next project: A fox fur muff for the stylish sake of toasty hands.

I’ve made quite a few of these from faux fur – the process is the same – but it is just so much more satisfying to make them out of genuine skin. I’ve made two out of rabbit, and this is my first go at making one out of a Fox.

Skin is ready. Has been measured and the location of the phone pocket has been marked out

Lining fabric (a nice wool/cotton blend), pocket and stuffing has been cut out before the pocket is sewn onto the backing.

Skin has been carefully cut with a scapel from the skin side to prevent any unnecessary loss of hair.

A sandwich is made: stuffing, Lining – face up, Skin – face down. All of it is sown along the edges (the belly parts of the skin – the best part of the ski is the back, and I want to preserve as much of that as I can.

Using a regular ol’ sewing machine for this because the fox skin is nice and thin and there will not be any great strain on the stitches. Using a leather needle for the machine to cut through the skin and prevent hairs from coming back up the stitches.

I’m using a pretty large step and a wide zig-zag to minimize the damage if a single hole begins to tear

Time to flip the sandwich! You want the stuffing to be inside this time

Now Pinch up the lining and stuffing and sew all along the edge for a nice little hand-warming sausage

At some point while sewing the lining, it might be a good idea to flip the skin over so it is an individual sausage running alongside the stuffing, connecting the ends.

Now is also the time to find a suitable neckband and when it is measured out, knot up the ends and stuff the whole thing into the fox-sausage with the ends of the band poking out at each end.

Clamp them down and sew up a couple of inches of skin in either end.

If you are using faux fur in stead of a genuine pelt, go ahead and sew more – just leave a few inches at the middle.

Once everything is sewn, we need to turn the whole thing inside out through the hole we left…

Tadaa! Now we just need to stitch up the hole we left behind

I recommend clamping down the skins to keep track of how far you’ve got left, and to help keeping the hairs out of the way.

All done!

A foxy sausage of handwarming

… I almost don’t want to give this away as a christmas present anyway…

It is even neat in daylight as well

That’s it for today.

Nice and easy, and maybe one day helpful for when I forget which way to turn things at the halfway point