Annas first rainjacket
For the hike this summer in the Dolomites I needed a light rain jacket that also worked as a wind stopper. The material needed to be both breathable, waterproof and weigh as little as possible. To buy this kind of jacket is usually very expensive and as I don’t have that kind of money right now I decided to make my own jacket. The trickiest part was actually not the sowing, it was to find the right material. I looked at many sites that sell this kind of material and I also read a lot of forums that discuss these things. It’s hard to find fabrics from well-known brands like Event and Gore Tex as the fabrics are not allowed to be called by their real name. Even so this kind of material can be rather expensive, so I decided to make my first rain jacket in a rather cheap material, so if something went wrong it wouldn’t be that painful.
I bought the fabric, P2B – Featherweight Breathable Nylon, and some waterproof zippers from www.pennineoutdoor.co.uk . On all the seams I put some Seam seal, SilNet, to make them watertight.
The pattern I used is from Green pepper (women’s rainier wind and rain suit, nr 133) and I used it as a base pattern and adjusted it a little bit to get it exactly how I wanted. For instance I skipped all pockets to save weight and I let the zipper go the whole way down as I don’t like jackets that I have to drag over my head, a specially not a rain coat.
I am quite happy with the result and I like to wear it and I will probably do the next in a similar way but use a better quality material. As I didn’t use any lining, the membrane in the jacket will wear out quicker.
The weight of the jacket is 204 gr and it kept me dry on our hike in the Dolomites. But as we didn’t have any heavy rain for long during our hike, I still have to test the jacket in proper heavy rain.