Raincoat Part 1

I live in Alabama and it does rain here.  I don't have a proper raincoat that fits and it seemed like the time to remedy that situation.  Besides, I found Vogue 1564 at the fabric store and it seemed like a very interesting pattern.

There's a very limited selection of fabrics available in my town, so I've been looking for online sources for fabrics.  An search for raincoat fabric turned up Fashion Fabrics Club out of St. Louis, Missouri.  I ordered a nylon fabric with a waterproof coating on the back.  The fabric as reasonably priced, arrived in a good amount of time, and was as described on the website.  I plan to use then for future purchases.

The coat does have a lining, fortunately, I had some suitable lining material left over from another project sitting in my stash.

Once I got the pattern home and started really looking at it, I discovered that it really wasn't going to create a really waterproof garment, just one that was most water resistant.  That might work fine if I was looking for something to keep off a list misting rain between the car and the grocery store, but I really did want something that could handle a heavy rain and keep me dry.  The fabric I bought is waterproof, so the challenge is to keep the seems and front opening from leaking.  The original pattern calls for latch closures -- 8 of them.  I did find some at my local store, but they were about $5 each.  Ouch!  Not only are they expensive, they don't keep out the rain very well.  Buttons aren't any better in terms of keeping water out.  Also, the welt pockets where the water can just run right down into the coat?  They have to go. 

I got this garment out of the closet as inspiration and a source of ideas.  This is the top for sailor's foul weather gear, more or less designed to keep you from getting more than just damp while in a car wash or a storm at sea.  One of the features of this coat is storm flaps protecting a zipper to close the front.  There's one flap on each side of the zipper and they close together with Velcro, completely covering the zipper.  The second feature is that the seams are taped on the backside with special seam sealing tape.  The original pattern called for flat felled seams, which does help with water intrusion, but a flat felled seam sealed with tape is waterproof.  After surveying the available options online I chose this heat-sealed tape.  It's designed for garments, not tents or packs.  The pockets on the foul weather gear are completely external.  You can get things in and out of them without compromising the waterproof integrity of the coat.  Finally, the sleeves have adjustable tabs with Velcro so they can be tightened around your arms and leak a lot less.  Fortunately, the original sleeves already have decorative tabs, which can be adjusted to a new purpose.

Now that the basic design is set and all the materials have been decided on an obtained, it's time to move on to making the garment while maintaining the waterproof integrity of  the fabric.  We'll take that up next week.

Spoiler alert: The day after I finished this coat, it rained about 2" and  I had errands to run around town.  That's a serious test of a raincoat and this one passed!