I've been looking at the various snow smocks on the forum that have been modded as well as the one by Barry Smith from Frontier Bushcraft.
Anyway, I bought one off of the forum and planned in my head what I wanted to do to with it. I then hummed and hawed for ages before I finally got stuck into modding it. The majority of the work is done, just the minor little bits and pieces left to do now.
So here it is, not looking much different to when I got it apart from it's obviously been dyed green
One of the additions I did was to add leather cuffs
Nothing major there though so I added a zip rather than having all the fiddly buttons to do up
Again, nothing too major so I added a hood volume reducer. Only when I was taking the photo did I realise I was off centre on the top section so it had to come off and be re-sewn on in the correct place
So not a lot done I hear you say, but this is where all the work was spent...
Making a liner for it from a thin wool blanket I had
I made a pattern for the liner by copying the various components of the smock onto flip chart paper
Once I had done that I asked for a bit of advice from Mary (Toddy) about how much extra I should allow for seams and she suggested about 5mm. Well the quickest way to add that all the way round your shapes is to use a marker pen with a 5mm chisel point tip. So much easier than trying to draw a line with a thin pen
So you lay the pattern out. What you can't see is I reinforced the edges with 50mm sellotape so make it firmer to draw around and draw out each part
Once all the components have drawn on to the blanket remove dog, and commence the nerve wracking part of cutting up a very good wool blanket :yikes:
One little tip for anything that needs to be centre like a sleeve make sure you mark where the shoulder seam of the main body is on the sleeve. Once you've done that then just lightly tack in a thread so you don't loose the mark. When you come to sew the sleeve in you've then got a point ready made that you know is put everything in the right position.
I didn't take any pics of how it's sewn together but Mary is doing a very good tutorial of how to sew the Toddy Shirts and you won't go too wrong following that as guidance.
It was good fun, if a little frustrating at times getting it all right but I'm really pleased with the end result. I'm especially pleased with myself as it's the first time I've ever done anything like this. My previous sewing experience has been making stuff bags for myself.
As for what it's like to wear, well I can tell you now it's going to be a very good, very warm coat for me in the winter. I was roasting when I was doing the fittings to make sure it was all in the correct place before attaching
I'm just waiting on the buttons to arrive from China and it'll be finished. These are what I've bought for it. It's going to be great fun sewing 20 or so of them on
Anyway, I bought one off of the forum and planned in my head what I wanted to do to with it. I then hummed and hawed for ages before I finally got stuck into modding it. The majority of the work is done, just the minor little bits and pieces left to do now.
So here it is, not looking much different to when I got it apart from it's obviously been dyed green
One of the additions I did was to add leather cuffs
Nothing major there though so I added a zip rather than having all the fiddly buttons to do up
Again, nothing too major so I added a hood volume reducer. Only when I was taking the photo did I realise I was off centre on the top section so it had to come off and be re-sewn on in the correct place
So not a lot done I hear you say, but this is where all the work was spent...
Making a liner for it from a thin wool blanket I had
I made a pattern for the liner by copying the various components of the smock onto flip chart paper
Once I had done that I asked for a bit of advice from Mary (Toddy) about how much extra I should allow for seams and she suggested about 5mm. Well the quickest way to add that all the way round your shapes is to use a marker pen with a 5mm chisel point tip. So much easier than trying to draw a line with a thin pen
So you lay the pattern out. What you can't see is I reinforced the edges with 50mm sellotape so make it firmer to draw around and draw out each part
Once all the components have drawn on to the blanket remove dog, and commence the nerve wracking part of cutting up a very good wool blanket :yikes:
One little tip for anything that needs to be centre like a sleeve make sure you mark where the shoulder seam of the main body is on the sleeve. Once you've done that then just lightly tack in a thread so you don't loose the mark. When you come to sew the sleeve in you've then got a point ready made that you know is put everything in the right position.
I didn't take any pics of how it's sewn together but Mary is doing a very good tutorial of how to sew the Toddy Shirts and you won't go too wrong following that as guidance.
It was good fun, if a little frustrating at times getting it all right but I'm really pleased with the end result. I'm especially pleased with myself as it's the first time I've ever done anything like this. My previous sewing experience has been making stuff bags for myself.
As for what it's like to wear, well I can tell you now it's going to be a very good, very warm coat for me in the winter. I was roasting when I was doing the fittings to make sure it was all in the correct place before attaching
I'm just waiting on the buttons to arrive from China and it'll be finished. These are what I've bought for it. It's going to be great fun sewing 20 or so of them on
