Pattern Background

The Ash anorak, available in kids sizes 2-8, is an unlined anorak with a snap front placket and zippered self storage pocket.

Size and Fit

My son is closer to a 2 in width (if not a bit smaller) but 3 in height. I made a 3. I feel like it’s a good fit, especially once I add layers when the weather starts to cool next month.

I made no alterations. Now that he’s out of diapers he doesn’t need the extra hip room.

Fabric and Notions

I used a 100% nylon gingham print raincoating from the outlet section of Gorgeous Fabrics. It was only $9.60 for a two yard piece. You need something lightweight and thin or else the self storage pocket won’t work.

I interfaced the welts for the front placket and front pocket using Heat N Bond fusible tricot interfacing from Wawak. I don’t particularly love this interfacing (the non-fusible side feels so plasticky to me) but it is good for lightweight, stable fabrics that just need a bit of reinforcement.

Snaps are from KAM.

The zipper is a #4.5 handbag zipper from Amazon. It is one of those that come on a roll that you cut to length and then add the zipper pull to.

Construction

Ever work on a project that just seemed to fight you every inch of the way? That was this project for me. I stayed up way too late both nights I worked on it because I refused to be defeated. Ironic, because I specifically chose this pattern over the Jalie Maxime jacket thinking the Style Arc Ash would be a quicker, easier sew. I had spent several hours last weekend fixing my 10 year old Rowena steam generator iron so my available sewing time was less than I had initially planned.

This fabric was awful to work with. Very difficult to mark (and finally the chalk I used ended up being hard to remove), very difficult to fuse anything to, horrible to press, and completely unforgiving when sewing. It reminded me of how I hate working with waterproof/water resistant fabrics. There’s some puckering around where the hood attaches to the body and after carefully unpicking and re-sewing some sections I decided to just let other imperfect sections go. After all, it is an anorak for a three year old, not a wedding dress.

As noted on the Style Arc website, this is an archive pattern so instructions are minimal. This wasn’t a huge issue for me, but I do recommend either printing out the instructions on a color printer or viewing the instructions directly on an electronic device. I printed this out on a black and white laser printer. Which is normally fine, except the illustrations for the zippered pocket in the front were nearly impossible to decipher correctly because the colors in the diagram for the zipper and the welt were so similar when printed out in grayscale.

After too much time spent both trying to transfer the markings, fuse the pocket welt, and get the zipper pull onto the zipper, I realized that I had messed up along the way. When faced with the prospect of unpicking and trying to redo this work I decided it was better to just chuck the front piece and recut the front and pocket welt and try again. (I had plenty of fabric to left over to recut.) Even so, the fabric was just irritating to work with and my welt is still far from perfect because I couldn’t get the nice fine marking lines I needed. (The key to good welt pockets is precision in both marking and sewing.) I spent an embarrassing amount of time trying to get it right and in the end it still isn’t great.

I messed up again when doing the front neck placket. I didn’t sew the hood to the rest of the jacket when I was supposed to, instead realizing my mistake only after I had the front placket done and edges finished with serging and topstitched in place. I realized that the hood would look sloppy when attached to the body if I serged the seam like I did for the inner seams, so I made a self fabric binding, sewed it to the seam, and then topstitched it down. Similar to how you would do the neck binding of a hoodie. Even though it technically isn’t correct and adds some stiffness, I think it looks good and functions well enough.

Of course right after I added the last snap at the top I noticed I had not lined it up correctly when marking, so it’s a bit uneven when snapped. I was so over this project by the time I finished I just sighed and shrugged it off because it’s just a play jacket for a three year old.

I still have some confusion about the cuffs. Even if you turn back a double hem to make a casing for the cuff elastic, it is still far too wide for the 1/4” elastic noted in the supply list. It seems like it should be for 3/8” or even 1/2” elastic, depending on how you chose to sew the casing. (I would probably try 3/8” first because I edgestitched the upper edge of the casing to make things stay in place better when sewing the bottom of the casing.) Not sure if this is a mistake or if this is some sort of design choice but I’m thinking of redoing just this tiny section with wider elastic because I just know that elastic is going to roll and twist, plus the gathering doesn’t sit quite right.

I didn’t have a reversible zipper pull on hand, let alone one that would match my green zipper. So I used one of the normal handbag ones that came with the zipper coil. It makes zipping and unzipping the anorak into its pouch slower and more difficult, but not impossible. I added a self fabric zipper pull to help make it a bit easier. Instead of sewing right sides together then turning it out I folded it like binding and then edgestitched where the folded over edges meet. I should have done this for the pouch loop too, it’s much faster than turning that tiny piece out.

Conclusion

Even though my workmanship on this particular garment isn’t the best and I struggled more than I should have, I do think this is a valuable piece to have in my son’s wardrobe. It is loose fitting enough to wear over a sweatshirt in the fall and the fact that it folds into its own little pouch makes it easy to have on hand in my giant bag for sudden rainstorms. I really how the front pocket is fully functional for storage (he likes to pick up rocks and store them in his pockets when he plays outside) as well as for storing the actual anorak itself. Plus I think he’s really cute in it!

While I struggled more than I should have, I don’t feel there is something innately wrong with this pattern. It was more my inability to mark this fabric with the precision I needed, and the fabric just being rather inflexible and unforgiving.