We also have several pieces to our local theater company.

I’d be interested

Some animal rescues use old, unwanted furs for their rehab. A redeeming use, I think.

I worked for a community theatre group and we loved getting things like that. Do you have a local theatre groUp near you?

That is a very generous offer.

1929Spanish, fox fur is very warm in the winter. You will like it. You could make them into hats, headbands or scarves. Most of my fur hats, headbands are fox.

Maybe ship them to Kathy in Mi?

I would donate to our local community theatre.

Doesn't Marilyn C use things like this with her animals she rescues?

kathyg, thanks for a great idea! i know a person who owns a theater in the city and will ask him tomorrow...

i will look into our animal rescues as well.

1929Spanish also expressed interest as well

i have lots of options which makes me so happy. these were my grandmother's and i would love them to go a great cause/use.

thanks everyone!!

sprtphntc7a I'm sure that where ever they end up they will be enjoyed!

Tee Hee. This made me remember, all the years I was growing up, we had an animal that lived in the vegetable crisper of the refrigerator. It was my mothers martin stole, complete with head, hands, feet and tail. I wish I knew what had happened to it, I really don't remember.

My mother used to tell a story of us riding a bus when I was about two and a woman sat in front of us with a fur stole that included the head, with the mouth clipped onto the rest of it (the tail maybe). I don't know if it was a martin or mink or weasel or what. But she said when I saw the fur animal, my eyes got huge and I reached up to pet it, "Kitty, kitty!" My mom admonished me, but the woman said to let me be, she was very gracious to let me pet her fur.

I love how you worded this post with sew'ers instead of sewers, so that it was clear this wasn't a plumbing question! Seems like the perfect way to write it, so it is differentiated.

I had a relative that had one of those stoles. I was totally freaked out by it!

olychick: haha, when i was typing and saw "sewers", i thought the same thing !! hence the change :)

rbs: i always thought the same thing!

morz8: omg, i could not imagine seeing that in the frig!! thankfully they rested comfortably on the bottome of the cedar chest for many years!

My mother called herself a tailor. She took lessons from a tailor in her small town when she was in her early teens.

Just want to mention, you can't store fur in cedar chest. Cedar wood absorbs humidity, the pelt might have dried out after so many years. You can check and see if the pelt is still soft, Dry rot is very common when people don't know how to store fur. https://www.ramleathercare.com/dry-rot-in-furs/

Here is a link might help you and others to learn how to store fur.

https://kaufmanfurs.com/designer-furs-mink-coats-fur-coats/how-to-store-a-fur-coat-at-home/

thanks for the info ^^ !!

the pelts are still very soft, no signs of dry rot....

I've forgotten, was there a problem with saying "seamstress" if you thought "tailor" was male-specific? Even if you're not making clothing, it's still sewing -- needle, thread, 'a seam'. Is there a better word in a language other than English?

Well, we now call both male and female and other performers "actors", and that's become gender neutral. I think the gender specific terms are being phased out, and 'tailor' is more gender neutral than 'seamstress'. My mother was born in 1910, so it's not exactly new.

If one’s trying to avoid using the term seamstress, a good substitute would be dressmaker.

I'm looking for a word that doesn't indicate that the person is sewing a *garment*. We heard objections about that from from quilters -- and needlepointers, if that's a word. I objected to "sewers" for the jarring association with plumbing. I guess "needler" won't do the job. ACK!

We’ve also been called sewists, much nicer than the alternate pronunciation of sewer.

This reminded me of a funny story, too.
I remember those items. You can see them in copies of old Sears Robuck catalogs and many women had them. (Our local community theater had *a whole box* of them.)

I worked for a local tailor who had a difficult customer. The customer especially didn't like ME. Tailor and I found it amusing.

One day, hanging on the work rack, was a fox pelt. Not a nicely finished stole (lined with satin, padded head and feet, spring clip inside mouth) just the pelt. The instructions were to add a snap. I knew what the old stoles were like, and realized that someone was trying to replicate that on the cheap. I'm not a fur person, not militant about it either, just thought the whole fur thing seemed kind of dated and old fashioned, these days.

Tailor instructed me on the finer points of where to place the snap halves and how to sew them. I thought whoever the recipient was would be perplexed and disappointed by the resulting item. I thought about the current attitude about fur. I even thought about Richard Nixon, and his reference to Pat's "good Republican cloth coat." I started working on it and he looked over at me and asked, "Do you know who this is for?" (His writing wasn't great and sometimes he just used first names) "_____ _____. He bought it for his girlfriend."

I just looked at him, and started to say, "But she'll realize this isn't what he meant it to be." She was old enough to know what these things should look like, too. We both kind of chuckled about it then. Not our problem, but for someone who had a little bit of money and a rather worldly and sophisticated career, it was an odd choice of gift for a girlfriend.

Those things were grotesque! They still are. How in the world could you want the eyes of the little dead animal and its face hanging around your neck? What in the hell were people thinking?! They even have the legs still attached, dangling down with the bones removed.

No one wears these things for warmth and they don't make a nice statement, either. No one has any delusions that the person dressed in that evening attire hunted down and killed that animal and now wears it around the neck like some primitive hunter. Or, that the person is so admired that a strong male suitor graced her with this as proof of his skill as a provider.

But, maybe, just maybe that does have something to do with it. In decades past it has been touted that the ultimate gift a man could give his female is a fur coat. It is a standard plot in the old movies from mid century. And, she is supposed to feel so special for it. This is whether her life has any place for such things, or not. It had been an extremely played out status symbol.

I remember my poor old dad, who had absolutely no sense about such things, graced my mom with a silver tea set, which was another of those old status symbols. My mom had no more use for a silver tea set than she did for a fur coat. Luckily he did not indulge her with the fur of a dead animal, although he did indulge her with much wild game to cook because we lived in Alaska and he hunted. We had all wild game as our meat, but no skins or fur.

Those old standards have disappeared, thank goodness. Now if we can just quit dressing up our daughters to where they look like a giant white cake before her dad offers her to another male in a wedding ceremony, we will be making some progress.

I might have had some significance with a prehistoric human, but we are no longer that kind of human. And, women are no longer content to be given and received by the males in their life. But, that is a different topic, although it does fold into the giving of furs in order to woo a female.

ct. great story! You wonder what happened after that, right? Would make a nice premise for a story writing exercise, as in "what happened next".

A bit related is a time when I was making custom items and a client had an awful cartoon photograph of a horrid monkey and wanted me to replicate it on some baby stuff using appliqué. And the choice of fabrics was just atrocious as well. This person was some high paid sports personality. That was so ugly! I wonder what happened to it. This person had the money to afford something else and to afford someone to embroider it by machine. It was UGLY beyond measure.

Lots of money, but not much "cents".

I think that "sewist" is a nice term, although I don't object to "seamstress" just because it suggests gender. "Sewer" is such an unfortunate word with another meaning that is hard to not take note of when you hear it.

"Dressmaker" refers quite strictly to dressmaking, or garment construction, and I would wager to bet that more are sewing other than garments now days.

I keep hearing it said that now is a good time to take up a hobby, such as sewing. I beg to differ with that. It has become so very difficult to find the most basic of sewing supplies without extensive searching and ordering. I would never suggest that now is the time to learn to sew. As someone who has been at it for at least half a century, I find it difficult to even buy spools of thread.

Up north in the snow country we wear furs during the winter months, we have 6 months of winter here. Low temp can go down to -15 F. I like mink, fox and coyote. You'd see a lot of furs in grocery stores. :-) DD's 1st fur coat was a size 2T coyote coat made by a hunter's wife. :-)

Most of vintage fur stoles with heads and feet were made from mink and marten. Marten is an expensive fur, it has longer guard hair than mink. Headbands are easy to make and use less pelt.

https://www.saksfifthavenue.com/the-fur-salon-mink-fur-headband/product/0400092007993?R=812915027818&P_name=The+Fur+Salon&Ntt=fur+headbands&N=0

Fur wrap like this one is not hard to make:

https://www.saksfifthavenue.com/the-fur-salon-fox-fur-stole/product/0400088908301?R=812915025890&P_name=The+Fur+Salon&Ntt=fur+wrap&N=0