I'd seen Amy Butler's raincoat patterns previously, so wanted to use the kids' one to make a raincoat. They're sized in 3, 5, 7, and then in straight numbers, so I chose a 7 to give a bit of growing room.
I found a good deal on laminated cottons at www. fabric.com, and it came on this large roll--bet the person delivering it wondered what I had ordered. As you can see, the fabric is a bright cotton, girly print that was then laminated. I also bought a teflon foot for my machine, which was a necessity, for sure. The lining, which shows only at the neckline here, was a white cotton background with very small multi-colored dots that pretty much matched the colors of the laminated fabric.
Since I hadn't worked with this stuff before, I actually signed up for a class. Truth be told, I'd missed one offered earlier offered by one of my American Sewing Guild friends, so I begged her to offer another one so I could do this before V's big day. She did and another sewing buddy signed up and made a size 3.
Laminated cotton is an interesting fabric to sew as there isn't much (if any) give as you're putting pieces together. You can't pin into it (so you use hair clippies), you have to use a longer stitch length (for fewer penetrations into the stuff), and you're best off to have a machine where you can use both a teflon foot and the walking foot or built in walking foot motion. Even with all that, it still is sticky sometimes. The hardest part was making the belt loops and button loops because they were so narrow. I have some really light tearaway stabilizer from my embroidery projects, and had to use it to help those little pieces feed through.
One other thing I did before it all got put together was to embroider Miss V's name inside on the lining. I wanted to make sure if she left it somewhere they could tell who it belonged to. When she outgrows it and K or E wear it, it still has their last name.
All in all, it was a really fun project!
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