Saturday, April 11, 2009

Skin Sewing (Animals lovers Beware!)

I have been taking an Inupiaq skin Sewing class. So far I have made a beaver hat and a pair of beaver mittens.

Everyone things I should put a big red felt tongue and some googly eyes on these and make them in to puppets.

What do you do with a little extra beaver fur?
Eyebrow warmer!

The next project will be a dark blue corduroy parka with a wolf ruff. The fur ruff is not for fashion. It is function. The fur keeps the wind off of your face. And as I have mentioned.... it is Always Windy here!

The ruff will be cut from the across the shoulders where to fur is the longest.

This wolf was trapped locally here. I debated for a long time about what species of fur I should use for my ruff. But the state biologist said that the number of wolves this year was high, way above to number of moose in many areas near here. He actually recommended a wolf ruff!
Unfortunately the skin has not been tanned yet. This is going to be a long and interesting process involving scraping, and drying and rubbing with flour and water, then scraping some more, then rubbing with lotion. Hopefully I will not poke too many holes in the skin as I am scraping it, and I hope the fur does not fall out if it gets too warm as it dries.
I was surprised they do not use salt or any other chemicals or even brain in the tanning process. But I guess this is how they do it here. Maybe they do not worry so much about it smelling or growing bacteria here in the arctic.

1 comment:

NPinMilwaukee said...

eeeeew! Did you post that disclaimer for me???