Index

Fursuit Spraying

Immediately after getting out of your fursuit at home or a con, the first thing you should do is spray it out. There are a variety of fursuit sprays you can purchase, for example at LobitoWorks. However you can make your own suitable fursuit spray with a few ingredients, what I usually use is:

  • 1/2 71% Isopropyl Alcohol

  • 1/2 Water

  • a couple drops of your favorite essential oil (can get a variety of diffuser oils Here$20

Add it all to a spray bottle and you're off to the races.


How to spray your suit:

You are just trying to spray the *inside* of the suit. On your head spray all around the inside and avoid the eyes. you can put paper towels behind the eyes before you spray if you are really worried about it. Fold your body suit inside out and spray it all over focusing on the armpits and crotch. Add a couple squirts of spray inside your hand paws and a handful of spritzes inside your feet. Once everything's sprayed you should move to immediately starting to dry things.

Drying (post-spray)

There are 2 drying tools you should purchase along with your fursuit to maintain it properly.

Firstly is a Boot Dryer $28. This is a must. You can put both handpaws or both feetpaws on it at a time, or wedge both the tubes into your head hole(when doing this make sure the tubes aren't pointed directly at your eye screens). It will rapid dry your parts in record time, roughly 20 minutes each depending on how much you sweat. This means you can get all the way through your suit drying in around an hour each night at a con.


Secondly is a Wetsuit Dryer$75. This is less essential but I recommend you get one eventually. Once your body suit has been sprayed off and you folded it right-side out again, you can either leave it on a tough coat hanger to dry overnight, or use this Wetsuit dryer to expedite the process.

You can also use a hair dryer in a pinch but set the heat to low and keep an eye on it so it doesn't start a fire. Also only hit the inside of the parts with the dryer, never directly blow on the fur.


The name of the game for post-suiting cleanup is to kill bacteria and dry everything out before any can grow. Your fresh sweat on its own shouldn't have an offensive odor. If you leave it overnight without being alcohol sterilized or dried however, it will start to get funky.

Also, always shower before getting in your fursuit! You want to be fresh and clean with no residual oils to funk up the fabric.

If you adhere to a good pre and post-suit ritual you can wear it at a handful of cons before it needs a proper cleaning. If you slip up and things get a little funky though, don't worry. The next section will cover deep cleans.


Cleaning

Machine Washing

You can machine wash *some* parts of your fursuit. The body suit is machine washable. Make sure you fold it inside out before stuffing it in the washer. You can also machine wash sleeves after folding them inside out, and hand paws(obviously dont try to fold those inside out). Set your washer to delicate. Hot water is ok, but stick with warm if your washer has variable heat settings. Use regular liquid detergent but use half what you normally would. Make sure your front zipper and arm zippers are closed to prevent the agitator from snagging them and causing damage.

The Rest

You cant machine wash your feet (too big) or your head (too big and eyes), so what to do? For your feet, regular spraying usually works just fine, I mean, when's the last time you washed your shoes? If you however have some really stinky beans, you can opt for (the dunk).

Make a nice sudsy bathtub and well...dunk your feet in it! As long as you are using skin safe soap the fur will be fine. Dunk your feet and squeeze em a whole bunch. when you are satisfied drain the tub and do it again with regular water. Finally, wring all the water out of your feet that you can and throw them on your boot dryer to blast off.

What about the head? Well, I have seen some people "dunk" their heads before but its not something I would recommend for heads you get from me. There is a possibility of damaging the acrylic paint on your eye mesh. If this happened I would of course fix it for free, but you'd still need to handle shipping. Some people opt for a Green Machine $130 meant to clean carpets. You are welcome to try this on your head, but focus on the inside. That's where all the sweat is, where your human head has been touching.

There aren't many scenarios where the fur itself needs cleaned. Lets assume your feetpaws got some mud on them or your tail has been dragging around and is getting dirty...or you spilled spaghetti sauce on yourself. Whatever it may be, if its on a non-machine washable article you can either use a Green Machine, or just clean it off with a wet rag and brush. A wet rag and water will get you far.


(For protogen suits your options are pretty limited. The protogen bodysuit can be washed in the same way as a regular bodysuit, but the armor padding is tough. Your only options are to always keep up with spraying out the padding after use, and potentially use a green machine. I may start to make my armor padding attach with velcro so it can be removed for machine washing)

Drying (post wash)

It is very important that you never ever put any part of your fursuit in the clothes dryer. The heat will partially melt the ends of your fur and the suit will never be the same. For every suit part except your body suit, use the boot dryer. Even sleeves can be used on the boot dryer if you prop it up so they slide over the tubes. Don't lay your suit parts out on clothes-hangars to dry unless its out of direct sunlight. The intense UV light will fade the colors.

As for your body suit, lets say it just got done with the spin cycle. Its not sopping wet, but its still quite heavy with water, much more than after you get done sweating in it. Over time this weight will stretch out the body suit if you just leave it on a coat hangar/Wet suit dryer. To avoid this, lay a towel or two on your bed and lay the suit (still folded inside out) down on the towels. If you have a Wetsuit dryer, slip this in and zip it up to run for a couple hours. Leave a window or door open to vent the humidity. After this the suit should be light enough to finish the rest of the drying process hanging. If you are letting it dry the rest of the way in the closet leave the door open to vent the rest of the humidity. Once its dry you can leave it hanging in a regular closet with the rest of your clothes, door closed.

Brushing

I recommend everyone pick up a dedicated Slicker brush $10 to use on their suit. Get the kind without balls on the ends of the wires. A lot of furries stray away from the slicker brushes because it pulls fur out. This is true, it does pull fur out, but my comb also pulls hair off my head and i'm not bald...well, yet. Point is, there's a *ton* of fur on a fursuit. way more than what's on your head. Every single time you brush a fursuit you will pull fur off, but its never going to run out, there's just too much of it.

Regular combs and brushes can be used but they dont fluff up the fur like a slicker brush. The slickers almost "tease" the fur up so it looks brand new again. You've gotta do this right before pictures though because if you touch anything with perfect fur it will go back to looking off. Constantly groom yourself, just like a cat... or get a bunch of friends together and you can all groom each other... perks of being a furry I say.

Under Armor

These are also things that you really really need! Do not wear fursuits without them! If you are wearing lycra it soaks up the majority of your sweat. It also really helps you slide in and out of a suit, especially when its sweaty. A sweaty fursuit will really grip against bare skin *especially* in your handpaws. Wearing lycra gloves is great for getting in and out of paws quickly, something you really need if you are on and off your phone.

  • Long Sleeve Lycra shirts (usually black)Here $30 4 pack

  • Balaclavas (lycra) (I also permanently line heads with one of these)Here $16 8 pack

  • Lycra gloves (usually black too) Here $10 4 pairs

  • Light leggings or basketball shorts(usually preferred in suit)

  • Always wear socks with footpaws

If you are suiting at cons you definitely need atleast 3 sets of each of these, one for each day. I sweat a lot and will sometimes soak like 8 balaclavas by the end of a con.

lycra long sleeve shirts, also called "dri-fit"

balaclavas, these come in other colors too

lycra gloves, I usually snip an index finger off to use my phone

Basic Repairs

Obviously I dont mind handling suit repairs within reason, but to avoid shipping your suit over smaller repairs you should definitely know how to do a couple things:

  • Hand sewing: just a blanket stitch. great for fixing up small popped seams. I use hand sewing a ton when making fursuits since the seams are tight and for a lot of places its impossible to use a sewing machine. Get a pack of needles for $1 from wal-mart and a spool of thread close to your color for $2. Alternatively you can buy little pre-made sewing repair kits for a few bucks. Here's a mini-kit on amazon for $7

  • Hot gluing: A lot of components on fursuits are hot glued, mostly for foam and liners, and attaching fur to foam. Hot glue guns are $5 at wal-mart and a pack of sticks is another $5. There are many situations where a glue gun could provide a quick or even permanent fix for you.