Converting an integer to a string of escaped hex (NOT bytes)

Question

I am trying to come up with a way to convert an integer to a string of escaped hex, as if it was coded that way... for example:

x = '\xab\xcd\xff\xff'

I have tried the following function, but it appears that chr() only does this for characters with the integer value 160 and below:

def int2chr(val, size):  
    out = ''
    for _ in range(size):  
        tmp = val & 0xff  
        val >>= 8  
        out = f'{chr(tmp)}{out}'  
    return out`

From this, I get:

>>> int2chr(0xabcdffff, 4)  
'����'  
>>>

I would like it to return '\xab\xcd\xff\xff' instead...

This doesn't work any better:

def int2chr(val, size): 
    out = ''
    for _ in range(size): 
        tmp = val & 0xff 
        val >>= 8  
        out = f'\\x{hex(tmp)[2:]}{out}'  
    return out

>>> int2chr(0xabcdffff,4)  
'\\xab\\xcd\\xff\\xff'  
>>>

The closest I've been able to come gives me bytes, not a string:

b'\xab\xcd\xff\xff'

I am very surprised that there isn't an easy way to do this. Can anyone shed some light?