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Faking ermine fur
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How to fake ermine fur

First, it's helpful if you have read this note on ermine fur in Elizabethan paintings.

Materials needed for this tutorial:

Depending if you're choosing the 'easy, but fake looking' or 'difficult, but correct looking' method':

Easy, but fake looking Difficult, but correct looking

  • white fake fur, hair length not longer than 1/2 an inch

  • white fake fur, hair length not longer than 1/2 an inch

  • Black permanent marker

  • about 1/10 of that amount of black fur, hair length at least 1, but no longer than 2 inch (otherwise you'll have to cut the fur)

  • permanent marker

  • X-acto knife (or a carpet cutter)

  • Some fabric, e. g. cotton
  • Fabric glue

Let's face it - not many people can afford to decorate their historical clothing with real ermine fur. Me neither, so I had to invent a method how to fake ermine fur. I came up with two methods - a 'quick and dirty' one, which I don't like too much, and another one, which is a little more complicated but the result is better.

This here is the easy method:

Take a piece of fake white fur, hair length not longer than half an inch and a permanent, black marker and paint some strands of the white fur black in a diamond pattern all over the white fur.

This method has a very big disadvantage, though:
For a beginner, it might look like 'ermine fur', but on close observation, this method fails. As described here, ermine fur consists of white ermine furs which are decorated with ermine tails, which have a black tip.
Those black tips, if worked into clothing, are a little longer than the white fur; so that the above described method absolutely doesn't work, as the black painted areas in the fur remain as short as the fur itself and therefore look somehow 'wrong'.

So... here's another method, which requires more time, but gives a better result.

Buy fake white fur, hair length not longer than half an inch. Buy as much as you would need.
Buy about 1/10 of that amount of black fur, hair length at least 1, but no longer than 2 inch (otherwise you'll have to cut the fur).

Lay your white fur out in a way that you look at the backing.

Mark - with a permanent marker - a dotted diamond pattern on the white fur. Distance between two horizontal dots: About 3-4 inch; distance between rows: 4-5 inch.

Tip:

If you're planning on using this ermine fur on clothing - draw out your pattern shapes on the white fur *before* marking the diamond pattern, and if you diamond pattern it, take care to do this on both pattern sides (e. g. right and left sleeve) in a perfectly mirrored pattern.
This way you will make sure that left and right side of your finished ermine fur garment are mirrored as well, which adds considerably to the appearance - even if those are just sleeve cuffs you're decorating, it just looks much better.
For such smaller pieces of clothing - as cuffs - you should consider drawing a smaller diamond pattern, in order to not get just a single row of black fur into your white fur.

Now take an X-acto knife (or a carpet cutter) and cut out *as exact as possible* squares of 1/2 x 1/2 inch from your diamond pattern. Do that from the backside (wrong side) of the fur, but if you pull the squares from the fake fur, do it from the front (right side) of the fur. It can be a little messy... don't worry about it.

When you have finished, cut 1/2 inch wide strips from the black fur... again, from the backside and with a possibly sharp cutter.

Turn those strips into 1/2 x 1/2 inch wide squares (you may already suspect something!)

Twist the long black fur of the squares into pointed strands.

Cut about 1-2 inch squares from your cotton fabric.

And now... from the backside of the white fur, with one hand on the front side... insert the squares of black fur into the spaces of the white fur. The backings of both should be even if finished.

Apply fabric glue to one side of your fabric squares, and glue that square to the backing of the black fur you have just inserted. The fact that the fabric square is larger than the black fur insert will make sure that it won't only stick on the black, but also on the white fur backing, and by this, it will combine the two materials and make the black square inserts non-removable.

If needed, cut the 'black tails' a little so that they look a little pointed.

Contact: Please write to naergilien@yahoo.de with the word "Costume" in the subject line. My mail server will delete all mails automatically that don't have this word in the subject line; except if you are on my whitelist (which you are probably not if I have never written to you).
It may take me some days to answer - please be patient. If I shouldn't answer within a week, it's almost safe to say that I didn't receive your mail (for what reason ever) - in that case please resend it.

All images of my costumes and also the tutorial pictures as well as the descriptions of my work and various techniques on this site are copyrighted to me.
So don't take my pictures for publishing (e.g. other websites, books etc.; no matter if they are commercial or not) without asking me before you do so and especially not without getting my permission to do this.
My server is mostly set up in a way that it doesn't allow hot linking on images; so if you need to link to me, please link to one of my sites (hint: that's everything ending with ".htm" or "html" in your browser's address bar) on which you found the picture that you would like to link to.

All images of paintings or original movie costumes were not taken by me (except if stated so) and are on this site for educational purposes.
As far as I could, I have credited the original photographers and/or their sites or have mentioned from where I have scanned certain pictures. They remain property of their respective owners.

Kontakt: Bitte schreibt an naergilien@yahoo.de mit dem Wort 'Costume' in der Betreffzeile. Die Mailbox ist so eingerichtet, daß sie alle Mails, die nicht diesen Betreff haben und deren Versender auch nicht auf meiner Whitelist stehen, erst einmal löscht.
Es kann einige Tage dauern, bis ich Euch antworten kann - bitte habt Geduld. Wenn ich nicht innerhalb einer Woche antworte, so habe ich Eure Mail wahrscheinlich nicht erhalten (aus welchem Grunde auch immer) - in diesem Fall schickt sie bitte einfach nochmal los.

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Klaut meine Bilder also nicht, um sie zu veröffentlichen (sei das nun in Druck- oder Filmmedien, auf privaten oder geschäftlichen Webseiten etc) ohne mich vorher zu fragen, ob das in Ordnung ist und natürlich nicht, ohne von mir dann die Erlaubnis zu bekommen.
Mein Server ist größtenteils so eingerichtet, daß er den meisten Seiten keinen direkten Link auf Bilder hier erlaubt. Wollt ihr also unbedingt ein Bild von mir irgendwo verlinken, so verlinkt die Seite, auf der sich das Bild befindet (Hinweis: Eine 'Seite' ist in diesem Falle etwas, das in der Adreßzeile Eures Browsers mit 'htm' oder 'html' endet).

Alle Fotos von Gemälden (außer, wenn von mir selber gemacht) und originalen Filmkleidern (gleichfalls) befinden sich zu Studienzwecken in meinem Web. Soweit ich konnte, habe ich die ursprünglichen Quellen, Seiten oder Fotografen der Bilder genannt. Diese Bilder sind Eigentum ihrer Besitzer.

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