Sewing A Rain Suit

Charlotte's preschool requires rain pants.  They really do use them almost every day.  They are justified.   For reasons I cannot entirely justify, I decided that I should make them, for everyone.  Except Ariadne, she got a whole rain suit (and a whole blog post to match).  

The first step is finding some good affordable gore-tex fabric.  For us this meant a trip to the SR Harris warehouse.    We came back with six distinct colors.  All the better to grab the appropriate pants and not get to the woods with size 4 rain pants. 

Gore-tex calls for a heavy duty sewing machine needle (I think I used 90), heavy duty waterproof thread, and paper clips in place of pins.  

Next, get some good pajama patterns.  For the rest of the family, we are just using pajama bottoms.  For Ariadne I used a hooded sleeper pattern that I modified slightly.  The first modification was a placard that goes behind the zipper to keep the rain out.  The top folds over a bit to make a little stop to keep the zipper pull from pinching Aria's chin.  (I copied this from an old Land's End rain suit).  The second was a had brim on the hood.  It is four layers thick, to make it stiff enough to stand straight out.  And...a rain suit.