All of the faux fur collars in my etsy shop are vintage, but they haven’t exactly been easy to find, and the variety is rather limited. Thus I decided to try my hand at making my own. Since I’m selling them I debated whether to make a tutorial of the process, but I like to share, and I figure that there are plenty of people who have more money than time, and would rather pay me to make them one than do it themselves. For the rest of you, I present my tutorial.

Materials:
Faux fur
Lining fabric
Sewing machine
Needle
Thread
Iron
Comb

Methods:
1. Cut a piece of faux fur and lining fabric to the same dimensions. I cut mine 22 inches long by 6.5 inches wide. When you’re cutting the faux fur try to just use the tip of the scissors to cut through the backing fabric without cutting the pile of the fur.

2. Finish the edges of your lining fabric so that it won’t ravel. You can do this with a serger or just by zigzagging over the edges of the fabric.

3. You’re going to sew the faux fur to the lining, but first you want to try to minimize how much of the fur you catch in the seam. Go around the edges with the comb and brush the fur away from where you’ll be sewing. How well your fur stays will depend entirely on the length and direction. Mine, for example, needed to be folded away from the seam as I was sewing. If you have shorter fur it won’t be so important.

4. With the right sides together, sew your lining fabric to the faux fur on both long sides and one of the short sides. Clip the corners and turn right side out.

5. Iron the lining fabric to make it lie flat.

6. This step is actually the trickiest. On the unsewn short edge, fold over both the lining fabric and the faux fur to the inside and sew close to the edge. You will probably catch a lot of the fur pile in the seam, so after you’re done comb it out to hide the stitching.

7. Sew it to the collar of a sweater or coat, or add some type of fastener or brooch to hold it around your neck. Now go vacuum because you’ve got faux fur all over the place!

I promise a photo of it in action tomorrow, pinky-swear!

Edited to add: Here’s a photo of the finished product in action.

Looking for more tutorials and DIY projects? Check out my DIY page!