One of the last coal-powered sheep.
Most sheep are all electric now.

#DefaidodonDay #DyddDefaidodon #Defaidodon

Sarah modeling a layered extreme weather coat system. I look like I’m in a fantasy cosplay or at an SCA event except for my hi viz orange gloves. I have a short, brown elbow length cape with a hood. My hood is up and framing my smiling face. Beneath the brown hood is a green Viking wrap coat belted at my waist. Under the wrap coat you see the skirts of a light beige blanket wool tunic that goes down to my knees.

I live in Minnesota where most winters get down to -16 F/-27 C in the coldest months of January and February. We’re a state in the north-central plains of the US that is subject to a dip in the jetstream, bringing cold, arctic blasts our way. We take pride in being the ‘Icebox of the Nation’, or at least the lower 48. Okay, fine, we’re tied with Maine, but it’s not like it’s a contest, right? Right? First of all I need to impress on my readers that there’s cold and then there’s cold. And in case you don’t know the difference, cold is when your cheeks get rosy and your breath is frosty and cold is when the snot freezes inside your nostrils. In my experience snot freezes at about 0 F/-18. But we’re not done yet, my friends, there is also the level of cold where any exposed flesh is in frostbite danger, which experts say starts at -9 F/-23 C.

So, when my old coat finally died after 20 years of valiant service I needed a replacement worthy of the task. I’m car free, which means that unlike people who have cars and nip out between home to car, car to parking garage, to work or school and never spend more than 10 minutes out in the chill, I needed a real winter coat. I need what you’d wear if you were out cross country skiing or snow shoeing because winter biking for errands or waiting for the late bus in the middle of a blizzard are roughly equivalent to a back country excursion.

At first I considered making a new parka shell with high tech fabric and lots of pockets, just like my old Cabela’s model. The advantage of a parka shell is that it’s part of a layering system with some of them come with fleece or down detachable mid layers. Cross country skiers and search and rescue people know that the key to staying warm in extreme cold is all in the layering, from a base layer of wool long johns to midlayer and outerlayers – a warm fleecie or down jacket and a wind-proof, water resistant parka shell to top everything off. As odd as it sounds, one of the most frightening problems in dealing with the deep cold is over heating, especially while exerting yourself. You need to be able to peel off layers when you heat up in order to cut down sweating. Because after you’ve sweat up a storm inside your big puffy coat and then you stop to rest and catch your breath, you are in the danger zone. That sweat will stick to you and cool you right down. And when it’s really cold out, that’s when you get into hypothermia territory. So the idea of layers is to be able to regulate your temperature. Things heat up to a balmy 32 F/0 C and you can peel off some layers. The wind picks up and you can throw on your parka shell but leave the midlayer off. The temp dips drastically and the midlayer goes back on. The re-dressing maneuver can take a bit of getting used to, because you might be momentarily more cold than you’d like while removing an outer layer and midlayer just to put the outer layer back on. But it’s worth it to keep the sweat down and the hypothermia away. It’s something I learned while cross country skiing in the Colorado backcountry with my family as a child.

As I’ve gotten more deeply into sewing my own clothes and in researching historical clothing I’ve realized that our outdoor wear needs a boost of sustainability. Fleece jackets, puffy coats and even parka shells are synthetic, they don’t breathe very well, keeping your sweat in and making it hard to regulate your temperature. Synthetic means plastic. You’re wearing a plastic bag to keep you warm. That fleece or puffy coat sheds micro plastic every time you wash it, micro plastics that make it into our water system, food chain and even our own bodies. Plastic is from oil, so our winter gear that is supposed to help us get into nature and enjoy the wilderness, is made of dead dinosaurs. It’s estimated that 1.3% of global oil production goes into making synthetic fibers for textiles and a non-negligible amount of carbon is spent on producing and shipping clothing around the world.

But surely all these high tech fabrics are superior to damp smelly , heavy wool when it comes to dealing with extreme temperatures and demanding winter activities like hiking home from the bus stop with a backpack full of groceries. Umm…turns out it’s not that simple. During WWII the airforce needed parachutes but couldn’t get the silk and Dupont stepped in with their wonder material, a fake silk made of oil. After the war Dupont returned to a peacetime footing and needed to find a market for their wonder product and found it in women’s nylon stockings. Fashion and clothing was more affordable than ever with the new synthetics and the rest is history, as they say.

The change to high tech outdoor gear happened in the 60’s and 70’s, when everyone wanted high tech, light weight gear made from new products like spandex and gortex. And now in the 2020’s we’re seeing the downsides to this marvelous revolution in technology. Fast fashion leads to mountains of synthetic clothing that can’t decompose. Unfortunately outdoor gear and exercise wear (athleisure) are not immune to this fast fashion trend. The gear and clothing that ultra light hikers have is only meant to be light weight, not made to last. It’s not unusual for ultra light tents, coats and sleeping bags to last a few trips and need to be replaced. But just because this high tech gear is light and sheds water (for a while), doesn’t mean it’s better than wool.

Athleisure: Destroying Fashion and the Environment, Abby Cox. https://youtu.be/9Iu2fNPGUeM

How your Clothes are Poisoning our Oceans and Food Supply https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/jun/20/microfibers-plastic-pollution-oceans-patagonia-synthetic-clothes-microbeads

Are Clothes Made from Recycled Materials Really More Sustainable? https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/nov/06/clothes-made-from-recycled-materials-sustainable-plastic-climate

These garments are basically plastic and they don’t thermoregulate very well at all. They might shed the rain for a year while they are new. But, like a plastic bag, plastic clothing really sucks at thermoregulation. That is, once you sweat you have to peel off your coat, or at least open it wide open to air out or you’ll start sweating even more. And once you have all that sweat trapped inside your coat and next to your skin you’re gonna get chilled and maybe even get hypothermia in certain conditions.

My old parka was an old fashioned 60-40 shell, that is 60% cotton and 40% polyester with a bit of waterproof coating on the inside. It wasn’t an ultra light model, which is probably why it lasted 20 years. The waterproofing layer peeled off after a few years and was no longer waterproof, but the fabric itself held up and I made due with washing it and spraying it down with waterproofing every year. I’d have to spend several hundred dollars to replace it new and every used coat in the thrift shops was cheap crap, even if it had top brand outdoor gear name on it. I looked around at outdoor patterns, Green Pepper has some of the best DIY gear patterns about, but realized I really didn’t want to hassle with tons of pockets and zippers. They’re not fun to sew, plus zippers are known failure points — the first things to break.

Green Pepper outdoor gear patterns, including anorak and parka patterns. https://www.thegreenpepper.com

I started looking into zipperless options and came across the wrap coat concept.

The klappenrock was easy to make and fun to sew. The Vikings took the pattern from Eastern Steppe people they met, so the design is Asian in origin, and is basically a gi jacket, but in wool. It’s super comfey and warm, but it only goes down to about freezing with a few midlayers underneath and doesn’t block the wind as well as I’d like. A lady in my sewing group called it a ‘bog jacket’ after clothing found on ancient bodies found in European bogs. I made it from a wool blanket remnant from the bargain bin of the local Faribault woolen mill. It’s shorter than I’d like because they didn’t really have enough of the fabric for me to make a long coat, but you use what you got, right? https://www.faribaultmill.com/

I used the pattern from the book ‘Viking: Dress Clothing Garment’, by Nille Glaesel. https://search.worldcat.org/title/879682879 . You can watch her make this coat on her you tube channel. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGU31eQ4-Uk

You can also check out; The Kappenrock, A Viking Warrior’s Coat from 10th Century Haithabu, an article by another historical reconstructionist.
https://www.academia.edu/32370239/The_Klappenrock_A_Viking_warriors_Coat_From_10th_C_Haithabu?auto=download

After I finished my klappenrock I sewed this lovely wool tweed T-tunic that I wear as a midlayer under the klappenrock, when needed. I got the fabric as a remnant from a local shop, Digs in Minneapolis. https://shopdigs.com/

The klappenrock and tweed tunic pair started as a costume for the SCA, but after making them I realized they were some of the warmest things I owned and I just started wearing them as a regular coat. Unfortunately the combo alone didn’t keep me warm once the temps dipped below freezing. I still needed that parka shell or windbreaker to go over it. However, I knew by this point that wool really is the future. I might have gotten into wool and natural fibers as part of researching and sewing historical costumes. But it didn’t take long for me to realize that wool is an amazing fiber and that my SCA ‘costumes’ were actually the warmest clothes I owned and beat out expensive techno fabrics. Wool breathes well, is warm and insulating because of the crimp of the fiber creates air spaces that retain heat. Wool wicks sweat away from your skin and is water resistant due to the natural lanolin, plus it breaths very well, reducing the sweat in the first place. Wool even works for tshirts and summer weight and base layer clothing, where you need to keep cool. If that sounds counterintuitive, think of the Beduin and Tuareg people wearing wool. It reduces the transfer of heat from the outside to your skin, keeping you cooler in hot weather. Vikings of course wore plenty of wool and were known for raising very hardy sheep. You can learn more about the science of wool for outerwear at Weather Wool, https://weatherwool.com/pages/the-science-of-wool/ . Wool is durable and repairable, doesn’t rip at the drop of a hat and can be easily mended. It also doesn’t melt when campfire sparks land on it. The blanket fabric I used for my klappenrock was a loose, fluffy weave and wasn’t super windproof so I mostly wore it under my parka shell as an insulating layer and haven’t worn my fleece jacket since. It’s that good! And when worn with a belt the front overlapping flap makes a nice pocket to store my hat and gloves while on the bus. Unfortunately since my parka shell died I needed to change up my gear.

I had my material, wool. So I started my design process with a rough idea of what I needed my garment to do. It’s never a bad idea to look at indigenous, historical and folk designs to see what solutions people have come up with that have stood the test of time. If you look at Russians, Canadians, Inuit and Sammi who all live in cold climates, they traditionally all have long coats. Cold legs was one of the limiting factors I’d exerienced while walking my wife to work in sub zero temps last winter. When thinking of coats made from wool blankets I immediately thought of a capote, a Canadian blanket coat originally made from trade blankets. While the capote design might work well for snow shoeing through the woods, I was afraid it wouldn’t translate well to riding a recumbent tricycle in the city. So, I wanted something like a capote, made of thick blanket wool, but not in the design of a capote. I wanted it short enough I could wear it while bicycling, so a capote, great coat or full length Elven travel cloak wouldn’t do for this purpose.

While doing my research I came across the Voyageur wool anorak, above. This is a French Canadian design based on the coats of the Inuit people. I really liked the concept of the wool anorak, it has a classic style, but still looks modern. The traditional anorak lacks zippers and is a pullover, reducing the failure point of zippers and reducing the entry points for wind. The slit front opening going partway down the chest is good for venting heat, as the baffle at the neck can be pulled back when you don’t need it. The hood is attached and it has a hip length skirt and looked like I could wear it while riding a recumbent tricycle. I wanted more modularility with perhaps a detachable hood. I also wanted a longer coat that protected my thighs from the wind. Cold thighs at -16 F/-27c last year was a limiting factor in the klappenrock + parka shell set up I had last year.

The coat has linen trim around the key hole collar. It’s over size to fit over many layers. The sleeves are extra wide and long. I can tuck my hands inside the opposite sleeve if it’s really cold. The skirt is long enough to keep my legs warm in a chilly blast, but short enough to hike up to my belt while on my trike.

My sister-in-law gave me a king size blanket for Christmas. Thanks Sis! I got my coat out of it and have enough fabric left over for a short cloak and maybe some mittens, too. They only have twin size blankets now, but they are a much tighter weave and are thicker and nicer. Link to Ektos blankets on Amazon. http://tinyurl.com/es663mtp

It wasn’t exactly an anorak without the integrated hood, front hand warmer pocket and longer skirt, but it’s what I got when I kept simplifying and iterating the design. My tunic coat works pretty well and it answers a few questions I had about the lack of coat like garments in Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages. I’d read that people would just pile one tunic on over the other until they were wearing all their tunics at once on a really cold day and just throw a cloak on top. Since clothing was so expensive most people wouldn’t have more than 3 or 4 tunics anyway. I can say with certainty that my Ektos army blanket coat is pretty warm and that by comparison a tunic made with thick enough wool with a tight weave, like a wadmal, will certainly work as a coat, especially when combined with other layers and accessories like hoods, capes, hats, scarves and mittens. And as you can see from the Sami tunic coat (gakti in Northern Sami or kofte in Norwegeian) that the tunic coat design is still around and very functional.

I stole the side slits in the skirt idea from the Somali men’s long tunics — I needed to reach my bus pass and keys. I’d call it a tunic coat inspired by history but made for modern wear. It’s a square cut design, just like the standard ‘Medieval-Ish’ SCA garb T-tunic. That makes it easy to pattern and easy to sew, which is a comfort when you’re cutting into expensive wool! I’ve sewn a few T-tunics by now so I had the basic design and measurements. I just made it a little bigger for outerwear, taking measurements from my old parka. There are a lot of tutorials on how to make this tunic online. Here are a few I used:

The Hooded Hare, Introduction to SCA Clothing https://thehoodedhare.com/clothing_intro.htm

College of St. Ursula, How to Make a T-Tunic. https://stursula.lochac.sca.org/articles-stories/how-to-make-a-t-tunic//collegium_sewing_ttunic.pdf

Now about that long keyhole neck line. It’s great if you want to shed heat when you warm up. The Voyageur’s anoraks have a flap of wool they can pull back behind the lacing to help shed heat. But I kept with simple and modular. I’ve used a historically accurate wool plaid neck warmer called a ‘focale’ in Latin, it’s basically a just scarf. Soldiers wore it under the collar of their armor to keep it from chaffing and many working class Roman men wore it to keep a light chill off in northern climates, and in the southern climates used it like a shemagh or keffiya to keep sun and dust off. It’s apparently the ancestor of our necktie. It was certainly a lot easier to just use a scarf rather than sew in the complicated gusset flap and lacing of the Voyageur’s anorak, and it’s modular. Anoraks are a bit unwieldy to pull on over the head and it turns out that the longer skirts of the tunic coat make it a bit more difficult still, however the length of the keyhole neckline slit actually helps make it easier to pull on. I can even keep my bike helmet on and pull my tunic coat off over it.

The short cloak with hood or ‘cucullus’ was common among lower class Romans who needed mobility while working and who might not be able to afford a full length Roman cloak or paenulla, a poncho like garment. The cucullus is likely a garment of Gaulish in origin.

I’d already sewn a cucullus for my SCA costume, and yep, it was so warm I started wearing it around in everyday life. I realized I didn’t need to go to the extra trouble of sewing in an attached hood onto my coat. My cucullus, or short hooded cape adds another layer over my hands-in-sleeves method of hand warming, if needed. I think capes and cloaks should make a comeback in fashion. When even my high tech parka wasn’t up to the task of dealing with the Minnesota weather I’d add on a wool cloak over it and it did a good job adding insulation and fending the wind off.

I hardly need a hand warmer pocket with this set up. I understand why they always show monks walking around with their hands in their sleeves; it’s very warm. I actually like the cucullus over the traditional Voyageur anorak hood because it’s modular. If I start over heating I can take the whole hood off. And the extra layer of wool on the shoulders and chest keeps water and wind out and warmth in, similar to the cape on an Drover’s coat or Ulster coat. The wool will keep light rain off but a good soaking will seep through. Fortunately, wool will keep you warm when wet. The Roman cucullus could also be made in light, oiled leather to keep the rain off, and presumably in oiled canvass, too. My only issue with the cucullus is that wind will get up under it and flip the cape up over my head. I don’t wear my hood while biking. But, it looks like the Australians have a solution for capes flopping up in the wind.

Here you have have it, my DIY, completely modular extreme weather coat system:

It turns out I really couldn’t improve much on the tried and true designs. I didn’t get the more modern design of the anorak I’d originally been thinking of. But I did meet all of my design parameters. I went with simpler solutions and I now have a super functional system made for layering. Do people look at me funny, when I’m dressed like this. Heck, this is Minnesota. You can wear a blanket on the bus and people would just say, ‘damn, looks warm.’ Like, for real, some people just straight up wear a blanket on the bus around here. It’s the new thing in public transit fashion, and I’m honestly down for it. I saw no less than three people wearing blankets last time I took the train. Of course people who drive cars and aren’t outside for more than ten minutes at a stretch might look at me funny when I’m inside shopping, but honestly, I don’t care about them.

Now that I’ve worn Big Wooley about, with and without the other modular accessories depending on the weather, I can say that it’s warm. Very warm. The weave of the Ektoss army blanket is tighter than the Faribault wool blanket and keeps the wind and cold out pretty darn well, especially when layered with the klappenrock and cucullus. One of the things I noticed right away was that the thermoregulation is superior. I could work hard, stay warm and not sweat. I could get on the bus and not have to pull off layers to keep from sweating. And when I went back outside I was nice and warm and didn’t start chilling. It works decently well on my recumbent tricycle, too. I tuck the skirt up when riding and then when I’m walking around I let the skirt down to keep my legs warm. The garment isn’t so voluminous that I’m fwapping people with it as I find my seat on the bus, a problem that sometimes happens with longer cloaks. When I get too hot I can take off the klappenrock and hood. If I’m still too warm I can take off the focale/scarf and leave the long keyhold neckline open, which really does shed a lot of heat. I can even get the tunic over my bike helmet without taking the helmet off, as a bonus. I can think of a few more improvements; toggles or clasp to keep the keyhole neck closed, a nice bit of tablet woven trim for the sleeve cuffs and skirt hem, but that’s cosmetic. I’d say my current setup takes me down to about 15F/-9C with a mild breeze.

I’ll want yet another layer to get me to snot freeze and below. The deepest cold is when the snow squeeks when you walk on it, that’s frost bite temps. I call that weather ‘Super Green’ becauset that’s the color of ski wax used for traditional wooden skiis at the very coldest temperatures. We only get that for a couple of weeks a year where I am in Minnesota. But with windchill factored in it can feel that cold at much higher temps. So, I still need a wind block layer for when it gets really cold.

The voyageurs used waxed canvas or oil cloth anoraks, like this:

I doubt I’ll need it this year, we’ve hardly had a winter this year and February feels like spring. But do plan to make a waxed canvas coat next year.

That’s all for now!

https://amoreconviviallife.wordpress.com/2024/02/22/diy-extreme-weather-modular-coat-system/

#fashion #lifestyle #travel #winter

Buillt a tablet-weaving pattern editor as a hobby project, there's some features I still want to add but it's base functionality is working.

Find the App here: https://snaut.github.io/tabletweaving/

And the github-repo and a minimal explanation here: https://github.com/snaut/tabletweaving/

#webapp #javascript #tabletweaving #craft

You do not have to scroll social media.

You do not have to watch rolling news.

Keeping up with news is not the same as mainlining it and wallowing in it.

You can see the stats and results later. Watching constantly won’t affect the outcome.

If you’re struggling Please take a break and do something nice for yourself.