Raincoat Fix

I made a raincoat and blogged abut it here and here.   There's only one problem: the hood isn't quite long enough and the top of my head gets wet.  I decided the solution was to add a visor to the hood.  This will lengthen it and even keep the water out of my eyes.

The project started with a drawing of what I wanted the shape of the hood to be.  Because the visor will be symmetrical, it's only half of what I need.

I cut two of the visor shapes from the scraps of the raincoat fabric and two from sew-in interfacing.

All four pieces are sewn together to form a two-sided visor.  I tried using the seam tape on this again, but it didn't work well.

Finally, I opened the seam between the hood and the lining, inserted the visor, and sewed everything back together.  The seam isn't completely waterproof, but hopefully, that won't be too much of a problem.

Come back next week for more fun with a sewing machine!

Fun with Fleece Part 2

It's definitely winter now, even here in the Tennessee Valley.  It's a great time for a fun, warm, and cozy coat.

I liked McCalls's 6800.   This pattern calls for wool coating material or something similar.  Fabric like that is not only quite expensive, it's a bit excessive for the fairly mild winters of northern Alabama.  I elected instead to use fleece.  Since fleece has mild tendency to stretch, I used a completely non-stretchy lining fabric, polyester satin, to help the coat maintain it's shape.

The particular version of the coat I made has an asymmetric hemline, a lot longer in the back than in the front.  That let's the lining show when you wear the coat, so I choose a purple lining, just for a fun flash of color as I walk.  I also found that the shape of the hem made getting in and out of cars while wearing the coat a whole lot easier.

 Winter can be a rather dreary season, so why not brighten up winter clothing with some cheerful embroidery?  I chose some Hungarian style florals from Embroidery Library.    The purple from the lining even appears in the design, although it's not prominent.

The skirt of the coat is quite full and the hem quite long, giving me space for lots or repetitions of the design.  Usually, I try to embroider pieces before sewing them together, but that wasn't possible for this design.  The entire body of the coat has to be assembled before the embroidery along the hem was done so that the designs could be evenly spaced.  Many of them are embroidered over a seam.

Smaller elements from the design along the hem brighten the lapel and the bottoms of the sleeves.

Come back next week for a Christmas themed project!

Fun With Fleece Part 1

Polyester fleece is a fairy new and readily available material.  It's got a lot of nice properties.  It absolutely won't ravel, it's warm, light, wears well, has a little stretch, and embroiders well.  The usual use for fleece has been blankets and active wear style jackets.  I decided to explore different possible uses for fleece and came up with a few.  This series will explore some of the more successful experiments.

One great pattern for fleece is McCall's 5252.   This pattern has been around a while, possibly because it's such a wardrobe staple.  The pattern was originally designed for fleece and comes in variants with a hood or as a vest.

For the purple edition of the jacket, I embellished it with Art Deco Swan designs from Embroidery Library.

The swans on the front were difficult to do: the straight lines of the frames were very hard to keep straight so near the edge of the fabric.  The feather designs on the sleeves have a tendency to curl; the designs are a bit too dense for the fabric.  Still, it's a striking and useful jacket.

A different version of the jacket was originally intended as a cycling jacket.  That's the reason for choosing the very bright chartreuse color.  This version has elastic in the bottom and ends of sleeves to keep the wind out. 

I decorated this jacket with metallic embroidery, including one design on the upper back.  The metallic thread has held up well over several years.   However, fleece isn't particularly wind proof, so this jacket has some major downsides for cycling.

The third edition of this jacket was the most successful.  The light blue color is for the sky, and it's decorated with hummingbirds.

Each of the 8 hummingbirds is unique and I chose them all to residents or visitors to southern Arizona.  The hummingbird designs are dense, but they are also so small that they don't cause problems with the fabric.  This jacket is very popular among my bird loving friends.

Raincoat Part 2

Last week, I discussed modifying the design of a raincoat to produce a garment capable of really keeping the water out.  Now it's time to cut and sew the coat in a way that maintains the waterproof integrity of the fabric.  The fabric is coated on the backside with a polyurethane layer that's waterproof.  The problem is that any holes, for pins or for seams make permanent potential leaks.

To start, the fabric has to be cut without pinning the pattern to the fabric.  That means that the fabric can't be laid out on my usual cutting table, since it's not long enough to lay out all 4 yards of fabric simultaneously.   Fortunately,  I have a piece of floor that's big enough.  The pieces have to be help down to the fabric some way.  Fabric weights can be used for this purpose.

I don't have any fabric weights, but anything small and heavy works.  I found items meeting this description in my silverware drawer.

Some completely new pieces had to be designed -- the storm flaps.  These are not hard to create -- they are just rectangles an inch longer than the zipper(finished dimension).  The right one is 3" wide (finished dimension) and the left one is 2 3/4" (finished dimension).  The pockets are also not like the pattern consisting of a patch pocket and a flap, all of which are simple rectangles.  The sizes can be cut to suit your taste or available fabric.

With all the pieces cut, they need to be sewn together.  It's recommended to use polyester thread for this purpose, not cotton thread.  General purpose sewing thread usually is 100% polyester.  I bought seam stick tape to stick the seams together before sewing.

The idea is that you stick the two pieces of fabric together (no holes), sew the seam, and then the tape dissolves the first time you wash the garment.  The tape did a great job of dissolving on washing, but it didn't do a very good job of sticking the fabric together.  It might work better on other fabrics, but on the nylon, it didn't stick well enough to deal with curves seams.

I did have success with pinning the fabric together inside the seam allowance, where the holes don't matter.  The piece shown here is a sleeve tab.

For any seams where the holes penetrate to the interior of the garment, the seam must be flat felled, then sealed with seam sealing tape.

First the seam is sewn in the normal manner.  Then, all but 1/4 of the seam allowance is trimmed off of one side.  Note that the right side of the fabric is purple while the wrong side is white.

The longer seam allowance is folded over the narrower one and the whole thing sewn again.

Finally, seam sealing tape is put over the seam and sealed to the garment with an iron.  When cold, the tape isn't even sticky.  It has a matte side and a shiny side.  The matte side goes down on the fabric.  Use the silk/wool setting and don't even try to slide the iron on the fabric/tape.

Areas that don't get seams, but where stitching penetrates the garment also have to be sealed, like this small rectangle of Velcro sewn on the opposite side.

To create the pocket, sew a strip of Velcro near the top, then sew two pocket pieces together to create a patch pocket with right sides on both sides.  The patch is then attached to the front of the garment.  Pins can be used close to the edge to attach it before sewing, since the whole thing will get sealed later.  The pocket flap is similar, but it sewn to the front on one side, not three.

The sleeve flaps can be put together in a similar way.  Note that top stitching is necessary to crease the fabric properly.  I had to stitch the bottoms of the sleeves after this photo was taken.

The storm flaps are also attached to the fronts before sewing them to the rest of the pieces.  Attach a full length strip of Velcro to each, stick them together, then center over the zipper (which has yet to be sewn in at this point).

Most of the rest of the garment was assembled according to the directions from the pattern.  The zipper is added when the lining is attached, sandwiched between the outer fabric and the lining.  Those seams don't seam to be sealed, since they are protected by the storm flaps.

This raincoat proved to be quite waterproof.  The day after I finished it, I wore it in a serious rainstorm and I stayed dry.  Careful attention to details and the right materials worked.

Come back next week for more fun with a sewing machine as I start to explore all the fin you can have with fleece.

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!