21 May 2018

Rain Pants with Sealed Seams Part II.

The fabric is a coated nylon - you need some kind of a coated material otherwise the tape wouldn´t stick. I used a serger for some the seams. Reason being is the width of the tape wouldn´t cover a normal seam.
Problem was to iron the tape on the seam itself - it got remarkable harder with the thread in the seam. Also the iron is not producing heat very evenly - when it started to heat up to the level I set it was always easier.

The freezer paper helps a lot but after a while I found the tape was melting on the paper on the same heat level as before. I found out that it´s a sign that the paper needs to be replaced. Pretty often, actually.

When I got to the seams between the legs (i.e. the curved ones) it even got trickier. I realized that when ironing flat the other side of the seam will melt away - so I needed to get my armboard out to make sure there´s no contact between the front and back side of the legs. Ironing in the crotch takes time as you can only do a few cm-s in one go without ruining the rest of what´s already done. I also ended up using more layers for more protection.



I taped everywhere except the waist seam - I think it´s pretty useless there - that part is always covered by a jacket. Using a regular sewing machine with straight stitch is a much better choice than a serger - it´s much easier to apply the tape on a flat seam. Be careful with huw much your seam allowance is - make sure you choose the right width for the tape. You won´t need a serger anyway as the seam will be closed by the tape - means no fraying.

Serger

Straight stitch

Here´s how the final piece looks. Pretty simple - no pockets, no extra seams just the bare minimum.




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