I am making a coat and purchased some lovely and expensive cashmere. I have made coats before, but never with cashmere. I am concerned about properly stabilizing the fabric. I have been told I need to. I have hand pad stitched the interfacing and was planning on using an interlining, but am having second thoughts. If interlining is the correct approach, what should I use and should I also plan to stitch that in. Thanks for your help.
By: Mary Hudson
Hi Mary,
Underlining with a nice cotton batiste would be my suggestion. When underlining basting the outer fabric and underlining fabric together might be helpful especially if the coat is a full length or long coat. It isn’t necessary to pad stitch the underling to the outer fabric and I certainly wouldn’t use any product that is fused to the cashmere in any way.
Underlining will extend the life of the coat.
I also suggest pre-shrinking and pressing the batiste prior to cutting.
Your coat is going to be beautiful, soft and warm. Enjoy!
Judith
Sew in is preferable but I have had very great success with an iron interfacing that is made for stretch materials. Recently used it on a wool melton and the outcome was very, very nice.
Glad your experiences were good, Kirsten. I too have used iron on interfacing for stretch as well as for woven on various woven wool fabrics. The original outcome is very nice but on more than one garment after dry cleaning several times, the iron on interfacing came off and/or bubbled. On one of the garments, the interfacing and fabric separated in places and sounded like cellophane crunkling every time I moved.