Better grab a cup of tea, people.

I always tend to crap on, but I promise this one is going to be an especially looooong one!

I bought Deer and Doe’s Opium Coat the day it was released. I was totally enamoured by it.

I needed a sensible, classic navy coat which would last me forever. See, look at me being all sensible and wardrobe-gap filling.

And, now, I have it.

But, I must admit, it’s been a bit of a journey…

Starting with the fabric…

My Deer and Doe Opium Coat is made out of this wondrous cashmere blend from The Fabric Godmother. It is a blend of 76% wool and 24% cashmere.

And, it is simply lovely.

It’s also the most expensive fabric I’ve ever purchased at 45 pounds per metre!! (BTW, what’s your worst crazy indulgent fabric splurge?)

But, I have to confess, evidently, I’m not the kind of gal who’s had a lot of cashmere coating in her life so far.

Because when it arrived, I was devastated, at first.

The fabric was so much thinner and finer than other coating fabrics that I had used before. I simply didn’t understand how it would have enough body to make the Opium Coat.

I contacted the Fabric Godmother. They were absolutely lovely and were willing to accept a return of my cut fabric (three cheers for great customer service!!). But, they also suggested the possibility of interlining it with a more substantial fabric.

In the end, I decided to give it a go!!

It was at about the same time that Closet Case released a blog post about thinsulate lining. Despite some searching, however, I could only find a European stockist for very thick forms of thinsulate which seemed to be too thick.

Anyone out there know of Europe-based suppliers of various weights of thinsulate?

I played around with interlining with thicker wool in my stash but ended up looking like the michelin man trying to join the Navy.

So I ultimately gave up on interlining and just lined with quilted Nani Iro cotton from Meter Meter. Which ended up doing the trick!! Although, my sleeves are lined with a suiting wool from le stash.

Cashmere goodness

Since this is the most expensive fabric I’ve every bought, I figure it justifies going on about it for a little longer…

(BTW at the time of publishing these cashmere is on sale. I just bought some more in yellow to make the new Jasika blazer from Closet Case Patterns!)

This is extremely soft to the touch, with a slight sheen and a very slight nap.

I found it difficult to determine which was the right side of the fabric, so I ended up just choosing the side I liked the look of more. So maybe this actually an inside-out cashmere coat.

Highly possible!

Although it is rather thin, it is very tightly woven so it still feels quite warm and strong. It doesn’t fray at all, which is extremely useful.

I’ve made a few coats now and, I have to say, I think that a fabric like this, which is tightly woven, high quality, but not bulky, would have been ideal for my Rumana Coat or for any trench coat patterns out there.

I didn’t actually do much research as to whether there are any particular tips for handling cashmere but I did take the precaution of always using a press cloth while ironing.

And when I say ‘press cloth’ I am trying to sound fancy. I actually used the first appropriately sized scrap of cotton I found in my stash.

Please tell me an actual ‘press cloth’ isn’t really a thing and we all just use scraps, right????

Journey to the antechamber of hell: AKA preparing the Opium Coat

Preparing a coat is hard work.

It just is.

Unavoidable hard work.

So many pieces, so much interfacing.

As it was put by the lovely Caroline and Helen in the Sewing Coats episode of the Love to Sew podcast, the hardest part of sewing a coat really is the preparation!

I knew that much, going into this project. After all, I’m not exactly a coat virgin: I’ve sewn the Sewaholic Robson coat, a Hemisferic Coat, a Rumana Coat, an Ulysses trench…

But, somehow the preparation of this Opium Coat, felt even more like being a stuck in an antechamber of hell than I’d been expecting….

The first reason is that I found the way that the lining and shell pieces of the coat are overlayed on the pattern to be extremely confusing. I found it counter-intuitive (for some reason my brain expected the thicker line to be for the shell and the lighter line to be for the lining) and it was also confusing because there are some areas around the arm where the lining piece appears to be bigger, rather than smaller than the shell (just due to slight differences in shape).

All of which led me to make the near fatal step of cutting out my precious cashmere back piece using the lining pattern instead of the shell. At this point, I would have given up if I hadn’t spent so much damn money on the cashmere.

Evidently I’m not a particularly resilient person.

But, I gotta say, a lot of joy was sucked out of this project right there at the cutting stage.

So, if you look closely, you will see that my back piece is actually pieced together from a number of smaller pieces to make up for my trafic cutting error. Although the only place this is really visible on the ouside of the finished coat is around the neckline.

So, my main tip to aid your pattern preparation is: if you’re like me and you like to get your PDFs printed so you can cut them out directly and not faff about tracing, ask your printer to print 2 copies of the back and front main coat pieces, so you can cut it out twice – once for the shell and once for the lining.

Paying really close attention to which is which!

My other slight beef with the pattern itself was that after all the detailed pattern prep palaver, about half the interfacing pieces the pattern requires aren’t provided. You have to cut them yourself to given measurements.

Granted, they were generally just rectangles, so this probably wouldn’t have bothered me if I hadn’t already been feeling as though I’d massacred my Opium Coat before even starting.

My Opium Coat

My Opium Coat is a size 44.

On my measurements, I was osciallting between cutting a 42 and 44. This decision would have been easier if the finished garment measurements had included the upper arm measurement. The sleeve is cut in multiple pieces. Moreover, as a raglan sleeve, I find it hard to tell from measuring flat pieces exactly where the widest point of the bicep is.

With a coat, it is vital to know how much room you will have around the arms to help you choose your size based on what level of thickness you plan on wearing underneath.

Since this measurement wasn’t available, I erred on the size of caution and cut a size 44.

Everywhere else on my body, the size 44 was huuuuuge. ended up taking 8 inches in total out of the side seams.

But it (kind of) fits around the sleeve.

To be honest, I still have some difficulties with the sleeves of my Opium Coat. I kind of feel that they are too small and too big at the same time.

What????

Whilst, I took off a drastic amount of fabric at my side seams, the arms seemed like they more-or-less fit. I shaved a little bit of a crescent moon shaped sliver from the shoulders because they looked too pointy. But, apart from that, I didn’t mess with the size 44 sleeve of the Opium Coat as drafted.

Now, when you look at these photos, the sleeves are bunching up a bit and I feel that they look quite oversized.

But, at the same time, they don’t actually feel all the roomy or comfy. I also feel that I don’t have as much space as I’d hoped to wear thick sweaters underneath.

So if you are on the ‘full-biceped’ side of things, keep in mind that your needs around the arms and the rest of the rest of the body might be quite different.

Tips and tidbits for sewing the Opium Coat

OK, the whining part is done, here’s the part where I actually share some information that I hope someone somewhere might find useful in their Opium Coat journey.

The welt pocket – which is just the épitomé of awesome – was really difficult to pass all the layers under my sewing machine. And, as I mentioned earlier, my fabric is not that thick. I dread to imagine what it would have been like if I had been sewing with a thicker wool.

I played around with the tension on the sewing machine and that only made it worse. I tried to attach the welt to my jacket so many times that I was shredding my interfacing.

The trick that worked, in the end?

Sewing on the welt pocket using a big, thick heavyweight jeans needle!

Really wish it hadn’t taken me two hours worth of frustration to come up with that idea.

Also on the pockets, I do find that sometimes you get a little peek of the pocket lining fabric from the outside of the coat. Which makes my choice of a contrast colour for the pocket lining fabric a tad unfortunate.

Stick with something you’d be happy to have exposed in small micro flashes of pocket-lining visibility.

Umm, what else?

I added in a little hanging loop when sewing my Opium Coat, to reduce strain on the coat itself for those times when you have no choice but to hang it on a horrible hook.

Which I think was a pretty good idea if I do say so myself!

Also, if you are planning on making your Opium Coat with the belt, I would highly recommend ignorning the order of the instructions. Instead of sewing your belt last, as the instructions provide, sew it before you attach the belt loops to your Opium Coat. Then you can actually try it on with the belt and ensure you attach the belt loops at the position which works best for your body.

Finally, at the step of attaching your lining to the coat facing around the collar area, I was sure I was doing it wrong. It felt that my lining was just too small. But, have faith, do as the instructions say, line up the edges, and somehow, like magic, it ends up working out…

Ode to the Opium Coat instructions…

Speaking of instructions, these instructions were excellent, as I’ve come to expect from Deer and Doe.

But, in particular, the diagram and explanations for ‘birthing the coat’ were the best I’ve ever seen.

The process of attaching the lining to a sleeved coat and getting it all the right way out is something that has always required a lot of concentration and ‘what the, really?’ moments for me.

The way it is all described here just seemed so simple and gave me no problems at all.

In future, anytime I have to attach a coat to a lining, I will go directly to steps 5.5-5.9 of the Deer and Doe Opium Coat instructions.

Rising above sewing trauma

So, as you can probably tell this coat left me in a bit of a melodramatic mood.

In total honesty, if I had tried this coat on in RTW, I probably wouldn’t have purchased it, regardless of its price.

Whilst the trapeze shape is interesting, I don’t really feel that that shape nor its belted look, suit me especially well. In fact, the only way where I actually feel that this coat looks like I had been imagining in my head is when it is undone and worn open.

Which isn’t very practical for an intended-to-be-warm winter coat.

But, over time, I’ve started to become better friends with this Opium Coat. I undeniably needed a navy coat in my wardrobe and, despite my initial qualms, she is getting near daily use because the fabric colour and feel is just lovely.

So it seems that we are likely to be buddies after all, me and this Opium Coat.

Does that ever happen to you?

An unejoyable sewing experience affecting your capacity to objectively judge the success of a sewing project?

And some more sew-osophy

Beyond ‘don’t judge a sewing project by how much you messed up the cutting of it’, what else have I learnt from sewing this project?

You would think, if I were sensible, the lesson I should have learned is ‘make a muslin before cutting ridiculously expensive cashmere’.

But, you know what?

That’s not what I’m taking away from this.

Not even close.

Because if I had made a muslin, one thing is certain. This coat wouldn’t exist. There is no way I would have cut out the cashmere. And I probably would have lost the will the sew this pattern at all.

And that’s a pity.

Because well, in the end, despite our initial differences, I think this Opium Coat probably deserves to exist!

You know, I’ve always had a fearless approach to cutting out fancy fabric: ‘it’s just fabric, worst thing I can do is F it up’. Granted, I acknowledge that I’m lucky enough to have a degree of financial privilege which makes it possible for me to think that way.

This Opium Coat experience, rather than jolting me out of that attitude and making me more cautious, is actually having the opposite effect. I feel like once you’ve messed up 45 pound a metre cashmere, everything else seems low risk in comparison.

Hmmm, I guess that’s kind of the same mindset that could see people losing their life savings in the stock market – good thing I confine my risk-taking behaviour to fabric only.

And, most importantly, this Opium Coat has shown me that even things that feel like a major disaster in the moment, may ultimately end up not too bad at all.

And that pretty much sums up how I feel about this Opium Coat!

Oh and, finally, a little P.S! If you like to get your blog hits through Bloglovin’, feel free to follow me over there: you can find me here. And you can find me on Instagram here.