A Wind and Waterproof Kelly Anorak (aka Little Red Riding Hood)

Since I brought home Harry, I find myself outside a lot more often. I mean, that was kind of the point. I'm a bit of a chairbound workaholic and part of the reason I knew I needed a dog in my life was the non-negotiable walks they need several times a day. Most of the time it's fine, but man alive, there are damp, cold, rainy days where you're both shivering and wet, and he refuses to listen to your terse whispers to "Just poop already dude!" Up until last week I didn't have a proper raincoat, and I felt every minute of it when Harry refused to go in inclement weather.

Time to pull out that red nylon I bought at the Pendleton outlet in Portland last year and get to work on making myself an all-weather Kelly Anorak! And oh, how I am now regretting not making Harry a matching one with my scraps....

I really put my heart and soul into making this baby and get an immense sense of pride every time I look at it (G actually got a little mad at me when I showed it to him since he has such a hard time finding good quality men's clothing, but failed to take me up on my millionth offer to teach him to sew). One thing I wanted to try was underlining Kelly; a lot of you have asked for a lining option, and until we get to work on that expansion pack I thought it prudent to find a way to add warmth in the meantime. Underlining is kind of the perfect solution, and I'll be sharing a post later this week explaining how I did it.

You activewear pros may scoff at me for calling this a raincoat since I didn't waterproof any of my seams. In ready to wear, seams for waterproof jackets are finished with a seam sealing tape, but since I was flatfelling my seams together with my flannel underlining, I didn't think that would work. It's possible that rain will permeate my topstitching, and while I've read that you can seal stitch lines with a product like this, I thought I would try it in the rain and see how it performs before trying it. Of course it's been dry as a bone here for the last week so I don't have anything to report on the experiment. My gut feeling is that it will do just fine in short periods of east coast rain, but might get a little damp around the seams if I was hiking for hours.

I used the hardware from our Kelly Anorak kits, and the lovely plaid interlining is from Blackbird Fabrics (the plaid is out of stock but she still has the blue flannel I used in the hood). I also used a flannel backed satin in the sleeves so I could easily wear it with sweaters without getting stuck, for a total of three different fabrics on the inside. Somehow I misaligned one of my pockets but I doubt you even noticed so forget I said anything.

I had lots of fun with the topstitching and inside details. I made bias tape from a plaid cotton in my stash and used it to finish the hem and neckline with a Hong Kong seam. Makes me smile every time I see it.

I'm pretty surprised by how much the style of the jacket changes with my material choices. It feels much more LL Bean-outdoorsy than the classic twill versions we made for our samples; just goes to show how transformative fabric choice can be. And the best part? It's warm. The nylon is super windproof and the flannel lining means this is a coat I can wear well into winter, provided it doesn't go to minus ten in the next few weeks. Ahh, the power of flannel!

I've started seeing some absolutely gorgeous Kelly's out in the wild (some with some fabric I didn't even consider as options!) so I'm excited to share a maker round-up with you shortly. What are you making yor Kelly out of?

Details: Kelly Anorak in red nylon, Firmoo glasses (my secret eyeglasses haven), Nars Dragon Girl matte lip pencil, Blondo waterproof ankle boots