Minoru raincoat

As well as collecting a parcel of yarn yesterday, I also acquired a little bit of fabric from the glorious Goldhawk Road. I was on official school business to get fabrics for displays (I hope my headteacher is impressed that half was bargain remnants, and I even I got a discount on some remnants!) but I also picked up a couple of things for me. I got some fabric to make another Burda French-darted top, some stretch wool for trousers, regular wool for a winter skirt and everything I needed to make my Minoru jacket.

Unsurprisingly I couldn’t find any really exciting waterproof fabrics, so I decided to go for plain navy and line it with the most amazing bright hot pink! When buying a zipper (wow! long zips get pricey!) in the haberdashery section I saw some pink bias-binding – perfect for piping and adding a touch of fun to a plain jacket.

I had finished fitting the muslin, so today I used the muslin as my pattern and got cutting. I marked my new stitching lines with a pen, traced these onto the fabric and used them as my guidelines when sewing. Yes, I did trace a whole pattern piece with the tracing paper upside-down!

After a whole day of cutting, pinning and sewing in front of tv/radio (with breaks for food of course) I have almost finished the outer shell. I lined the hood and made some patch pockets (lined in scraps of fleece for cosy-warm hands) but other than that have stuck to the basic pattern (after a FBA during the fitting stage).

The colour of the jacket in these pictures looks really grey, but in reality it is definitely navy blue and the pink looks even better and brighter (the pink lining has made me squeal with delight). I loved the flash of pink so much I decided to tweak the hood pattern so I could have an extra line of piping 🙂 All that is needed now is the zip, front plackets, linings and hems.

The hair clip is to give an idea of the waist gathers. I’m slightly apprehensive about this, but luckily there are so many good sew-along posts on Tasia’s blog I am sure it will be fine. My big dilemma now is what to do about cuffs – I am tempted to knit some ribbed cuffs from some soft yarn but I’m not sure they would be practical when it rains!