I took these photos before I went on holiday which is why my hair is way shorter.
I can't
remember which sewing blog it was that I first saw a raincoat made of laminated
cotton on, but I immediately went searching to see if I could find some similar
fabric. I bought this Michael Miller laminated cotton off Etsy and then it sat
in my sewing stash for about a year. I didn't sew it up because I was scared of
ruining it. Usually when I sew I use my unpicker quite a bit. With laminated
fabric you can't really unpick your sewing if you do something wrong because
the needle leaves holes in the fabric. You can't use pins or iron it either.
My trip to England finally spurred me on to make a raincoat because I didn't
have one to take with me.
The only
coat pattern I had on hand was Simplicity 8452 which I had picked up at an op
shop for 20c. I didn't really love it but couldn't find anything better in the limited time I had.
Luckily,
it doesn't look that much like the pattern envelope. It's longer (although that
could just be because I'm short) and more a-line than the picture. I really
like the pleat at the back.
 |
| Don't look to closely at the topstitching, it's a bit wonky |
The
construction wasn't actually as hard as I thought it would be. The worst part
was the topstitching. I hate topstitching at the best of times but it's a
million times worse when you know you can't unpick it if you screw up. I used bulldog clips for holding the pieces
together instead of pins. My Mum has a sewing machine foot she uses for making
things out of oilcloth so I used that because a normal foot would stick to the fabric.
I used
snaps instead of buttons because I thought that doing buttonholes in the fabric
would be difficult. The snaps were the most fun part because I got to use my
hammer to bang them in.
I didn't
end up taking the raincoat to England because it's quite heavy and if you get
the laminated fabric creased it stays like that. I did wear it a couple of
times before I went though and I'm sure I'll get lots more wear out of it when summer's
over and we start getting rain again.