Performance Clothing - Make a Micro-Fleece

For once it's not about weight, it's about comfort and fit. The garment I'm quite tall and I find that fleeces in particular are quite short for me and that leads to nasty draughts and needless hassle. In looking through the websites for various fabric suppliers I realized that it is actually possible to buy a good variety of performance fabrics such as fleece. If you go online or go to your local fabric shop for 'everyday' fabrics you will find that they also sell lots of sewing patterns including ones that are for outdoor gear they will also sell some fleeces but less high-tech. The patterns you can buy will generally (not always) be a little less sophisticated than the equivalent commercial garments that you can buy but that in fact is just what you want because it's easier to sew!

Micro-fleece is a very easy fabric to work with and a garment like this is about as easy as it gets. If you've not sewn clothing before then this would be a great introduction. Any old sewing machine will be good enough...

I've picked a pattern that I like for fleeces which is a Kwik Sew pattern #3817. Every catalogue will have several patterns that you can make use of.

In using this pattern I've made the sleeves a little longer than the pattern and the body is also a little longer than the pattern. It weighs about 20% more than the commercial one it replaces and that reflects the fact I've used a good quality micro-fleece and have made it to be about 4" longer than the garment it replaces. It might be that I still trim an inch or two off the final garment before it gets lots and lots of outdoor use.

I've done a few design tweaks to address things that I don't like about many commercial fleeces that I can find.

1. I've used 20mm elastic on the hip/waist-line. (The Kwik Sew pattern doesn't have elastic). I've used wide elastic so that it doesn't bite and isn't too tight.

2. I've used 20mm elastic on the sleeves and I've taken some time to make sure that the elastic closes out the air-gap at the wrist but doesn't bite in.

3. I've fitted a baffle behind the zip (like you find on fleece jackets) so that the wind is kept out a bit better.

I've now made two fleeces using this pattern. The second fleece is shown above. The first one has no elastic in it and was made following the pattern.

I've got no instructions to give on this, the pattern will tell you all you need to know and how much fabric to buy. Basically 2m/2yd off a 1.5m/60" roll is usually enough to make a garment like this.

As a guide I'd say that making this one took me five hours and that's about par.