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Cutting Fake Fur
Once you have marked your designs on to the backing of the fur, you will obviously need to cut them out. This must be done carefully, especially with longish fur, otherwise what you end up with when you sew the finished article together will look unrealistic and as if it's been cut. Thus here is a guide on how to cut fur:
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Turn the entire design over, so that the fur faces upwards, first making a mental note of where the cutting lines you have drawn on the reverse of the fabric will go.
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Using (preferably) a pet grooming brush or a semi-fine toothed comb, first brush the entire area of the design in the natural, downwards direction of the fur so as to untangle any fur that may have got twisted up.
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Next, brush the fur in a direction at right-angles to the cutting line, and into the centre of the design, as shown in the diagram below. Make sure you brush enough so that the fur is definitely running in that direction rather than trying to revert to its natural one. You will need to treat each cutting line separately (i.e. brush and cut one line, then repeat for subsequent lines) rather than to try and brush the entire design in one go and then do all the cutting, since the directions will get mixed up at joins.
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Turn the fabric over carefully so as not to disturb the fur that you have just brushed into place.
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Cut along the marked line. This can either be done with a (very sharp) cutting knife, or with (equally sharp) scissors. Again, be careful not to disturb the brushed fur as you cut.
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Repeat the process for each of the other cutting lines. It is time-consuming, but will make for a much better result in the long run, which is what's important. Once the design in cut out, brush the fur back to its natural direction, remembering that because you will have cut some fur away from the backing fabric, it will moult a fair bit at this stage.
With the remaining material, you will notice that at the edges that have been cut, some fur will have been lost. This is a minor sacrifice that needs to be made to absolutely ensure that no fur is lost from the final, cut away design. Hence when planning laying out several designs on one piece of fur fabric, allow for a couple of inches between adjacent areas for the cutting process, otherwise the object of this lengthy process will be defeated.
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