My waterproof Minoru and the give-away winner!

Hi guys!

Thank you all so much for the super sweet comments on my Watson jacket! It was awesome reading all your fabric ideas and plans.. So first things first, the winner of the Watson pattern is.... 

Drumroll please....

Lisette! She blogs at What Would Nancy Drew Wear and she was super sweet to let me borrow one of her pictures from the meet-up.. Please email me your details at Revesmecanique (at) gmail.com and I'll email them to Katie from Papercut Patterns!

And then, my next make, another jacket! I've wanted to sew up the Minoru jacket ever since I saw Lladybirds version in real live at the meet-up. I followed the Sew-along and it was super helpful.

Finished Minoru

I cut a size 6, even though the hip width is too wide for me. I figured I'd just try and see how I would like it. For my next jacket I will take it in a bit at the hips, as it stands out a bit right now. 

I used waterproof fabric that I got in Italy for 3.5 Euro's per meter, (discounted 50%) so that was super nice! I'm really happy with the colour, even though it might not be the best colour for me in winter..

To show you how waterproof it really is we did a little experiment this afternoon.. For once we had no rain in The Netherlands for a whole weekend, so we had to simulate some! (Which my sister was super happy to do) At first I was like, wtf aaarrgh! But then I realised that my jacket was actually waterproof and I could relax a bit.

Good result right? Considering she poured like 4 watering cans (gieters in Dutch) on me..

This jacket will mainly be used for walking the dogs (often in the rain), so I added side pockets into which the doggy-poo bags fit. I followed Amy's tutorial on how to add side pockets.
The instructions were easy to follow, especially with all the pics on the Sew-along. I noticed I was short on thread, and two sewing supply stores didn't have the same colour as I was using, so I switched to using the bobbin as top thread and use another close matching colour as the bottom thread. For topstitching I used the triple top stitching setting on my machine which worked fine. Another issue I had is that the zipper which was supposed to go in the collar didn't fit, it was too small, so I ended up using my front zipper and then having to go back to the store to get another long zipper. I still don't know where I went wrong, but in the end it worked out fine.

Marking the elastic casing

For the lining I used a cotton, only the sleeves were lined with a much more slippery polyester, which I still had in my stash. I changed the internal pocket size, so it would fit my phone. Here are some close-ups for the internal details.. 

Sleeve lining..

Velcro closure pocket 

Triple topstitching 

The hood, which can be hidden into the collar

Overall I'm super happy with my jacket and can't wait to bring it with me to Berlin in 2 weeks!

 My next Minoru will be a thin wool version, I'm thinking of adding some extra layering, so it will be more winter appropriate..