In Alaska fur is not for fashion, it has a very important function: keep warm and prevent frostbite. I have been taking a skin sewing class ad have learned how to make a ruff from the raw hide of an animal.
After letting the hide dry, I scraped it with a took made from a short piece of copper pipe on a wooden handle. I did this until all of the flesh and fibers were removed from the skin. I did put a few holes in the hide as I scraped it, but it is mostly intact.
Vera helped me mark out the strips to cut across the wolf's neck and shoulders where the hair is the longest. We decided to make the strips about 4 inches wide. In the village the ruffs tend to be big and fluffy, perhaps it is a bit of a status symbol.
We had to find and mark the centerline of the skin because the hair is longest in the center and gets shorter as you go out to the sides. We will take most of our pieces from the center.
The center piece is cut and the pieces have to be matched with other pieces of the same length and color. The pieces are numbered and lettered to keep track of their placement in the ruff. Also the arrow shows the direction of the flow of the fur.
Here is the layout.
And the final product: I put an inch of beaver fur along the front edge of the ruff to make it soft against my face.
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