Raincoat the Second

Ta da!  please allow me to present the raincoat that I have made for Cassie.
It is made using the same self-drafted pattern I used for my own raincoat, with just a few minor fitting adjustments.  All the details are identical to my own coat; the seams in the shell are French seams, waterproofed with Seam Grip, and the coat is fully lined with soft and lightweight white polyester net.
Cassie chose the colour herself and I am happy with the knowledge that she is unlikely to get run over crossing the road whilst wearing this  ;)

I ran into a snag buying the pink fabric, that fortuitously turned into a stroke of brilliant good fortune: previously when buying the royal blue fabric for my own raincoat I had bought 3m to ensure I had plenty to play with, since there is nothing worse than running out of fabric halfway through a project, no?  It turned out 3m was plenty, in fact it was way more than plenty and I ended up with an annoyingly large leftover piece.  This is a pain, because I am really trying to rid my life of leftovers.  Especially icky nylon leftovers which have a very small desirability in my wardrobe.  So when I went in to buy the nylon for Cassie's raincoat I asked for 2m of pink, and was mildly horrified when the roll only had 1.4m left on it.  But the cunning stash-busting part of my brain instantly saw a beautiful possibility....  a quick consultation with Cassie, who cheerfully agreed that yes, a wide blue stripe did indeed sound very nice (phew!) and I went home with the 1.4m of pink, joyful that I was going to be gainfully using up the rest of that blue nylon after all... and so quickly after it had joined the stash too!  (air fist punch) Yeeah!

Of course it was not all beer and skittles from then on; I did have to conjure up a bit of pattern placement magic, and do various mental calculations for various stripe scenarios, and there is one short extra piecing seam in the blue under one sleeve, but I did manage to squeak the raincoat out of my pieces of royal blue and pink successfully.  I'm pleased to report that the final scrap count is almost non-existent too ('nother air fist punch).

There was a hiccup; the making of this second raincoat did not go as smoothly as the first.  You know how the second time you do a thing everything is supposed to go much much quicker and easier?

Well, no.

Halfway through, my ironing cloth slipped a bit and I managed to iron a hole in one almost-completed front.  It was a very small hole, but it was.  An.  Unmistakeable.  HOLE!  When I saw this; steam started to emit from the ol' ears and I had to walk away to calm down for a few hours.
Once I had regained some composure, I returned to the coat and thought about possibilities.  Y'know when life gives you lemons there is always a silver lining, or something or another, yeah?  And I surprised myself with my own ingenuity by coming up with the idea of a little pocket for her iPod.  Where the offending hole was, there is now a welt, covering a little internal pocket.  It closes with a little mini-strip of velcro, with enough room at the top for the headphone cord to come out.  And fortuitously, the welt is in the perfect position where its vertical opening is covered by the zip placket when the zip is closed, improving waterproof-ability.  Yowza!  It's like I planned it all along!!

Below left; I made the welt as small as I could that could still fit the iPod sliding in sideways, the pocket bag hangs below and to the side... Below right; I stitched the top of the pocket bag to the lining to help reduce the drag effect of having the pocket bag off to the side of its opening.  Fortunately, iPods are very lightweight!

I am happy now.
And y'know what?  I am even more ecstatically happy that none of my boys wants or needs a raincoat, and that this is the end of raincoats.  At least for now.  I'm raincoat-ed out.  I want to make something fun and easy and selfishly frivolous now!
Later, fellow self-fashionistas!