Winter Jacket

Apologies for my absence recently. I was in the process of making this winter jacket for Christmas when I found out the awful news that my dad had passed away. My whole world went down into a spiral and I rushed back home to Malaysia the next day so I can attend my dad’s funeral. The confidence that my dad had for me in my skills was what made me push on to create more stuff so this post is dedicated to him; the man who made it all happen.

Being a turbulent and uneasy time for me, my friend recommended that I brought all my materials back home to sew, saying that it could at least take my mind of this ordeal. So I did exactly that and during times when I couldn’t sleep or feel sad, I went straight to the sewing machine and started sewing. The result is a padded winter jacket with a hood and removable faux fur trimming.

I started this jacket from scratch and this included the padded lining. There was some polyfill stuffing left in the college and instead of throwing it away, I decided to take it home and tried to stuff the lining to make it suitable for extreme winter wear. I drew up the pattern for the jacket (I sized it up twice to ensure that I can still fit into it once the padded lining has been inserted) and with the lining pattern, I drew several horizontal lines on the pattern and widen each line by a centimeter. My rational for doing this is once the polyfill stuffing has been inserted, the whole lining will become shorter due to the bulge of the padding and by extending the length, an allowance has been given for this. When cutting the lining fabric, I cut out two set of each pattern, and overlocked these pieces together so the polyfill stuffing will not spill out when being sewn, so in reality, the polyfill stuffing is sandwiched by two piece of fabric and sewn onto the main fabric (i.e. 3 layers of fabric + wadding).

I drew the pattern of the hood based on the ‘Metric Pattern Cutting for Menswear’ book by Winifred Aldrich but I made some major adjustment including enlarging the shape and creating a more voluminous shape. For the faux fur trimming, I sewed a strip of faux fabric onto the fur and inserted some press studs on the trimming and the hood. This meant that I can remove the fur trimming if I wanted to.

As for the cuff, I sewed the ribbing onto a piece of lining and inserted it on the opening of the cuff. To be honest, this was a design feature that I copied from my Canada Goose jacket. As for the pocket, it’s a normal patch pocket but with a mitre in the corners so that it is not flat but raised.

Some of you may be wondering what is the use of a winter jacket if it does not keep you dry. I was worried about that as well until I found this amazing product in Amazon. It’s called ‘Nikwax’ and all you need to do is wash the garment with this solution and once air dried, your garment will be waterproof. I originally wash the fabric in this solution in the washing machine but it wasn’t 100% waterproof so when the main shell of the fabric was sewn, I washed it again in this solution, this time by hand and it did the trick.

I wanted to model this garment myself but being extremely hot in Malaysia at the moment, I think I will leave this for when I get back to UK.

It took me quite a while to sew this garment but I’m quite impressed with the results. I’m sure my dad will be as well. He was usually the first to throw the ‘oo-s’ and ‘ah-s’ when I finish making something. I’m a bit sad that I won’t be able to hear his wonderful praises again but I am glad that everything I can do today is because of him.

Here’s to you Dad!