Ying was one of those students who presents herself with a challenge right out of the gate.  We started off with Simplicity #6680; she worked it up in a camelhair cashmere with a printed silk twill lining. Let’s do it.

She started off with a really nice 100% cashmere, some pink silk tafetta for the bindings, and a silk twill for the lining.

As she worked out way through the collar and tailoring, she found that a layer of fusible interfacing in a tailor’s weight fused to the cashmere gave her a better base for the hair canvas and padstitches.  Don’t go too heavy or your collar and facings are going to get overwhelmed.

Cashmere isn’t great as a first tailoring project.  It is soft and delightful, but it will trick you – the heft of the fabric feels more substantial than it is – this means that any stitches you make – right or wrong are going to show up in the finished product.

You also have to be careful how you press it – nice cashmere is really (really) easy to over-press and doesn’t recover from it like wool of the same weight and mass.  Watch out for this.  When you are pressing it make sure you use a press cloth and steam, but don’t go nuts here – you can always press it again if you aren’t happy.  If you over-press it and crimp or mat the fibers that is the end of that.  All of the soft brass brushes in the kingdom will not save you.

Overall, this is a good pattern for a beginner – you will just want to make sure your fabric is stable and has some weight to it.

You can find Simplicity #6680 on Pattern Review here.

You an find it online, but make sure when you are doing your buying that all of the pieces are there.  There are 8 total pieces.

If you are in or near Chicago and want to spend the afternoon tracing, you are more than welcome to come up and trace one out!