Wool Blanket Anorak – Make your own in a few easy steps

Here’s we have a timely article by MickeS in the UK on how to make a smock out of a woolen blanket. Generally, you can pick up blankets from surplus stores or find one in your grandmother’s attic that she might let you have. It’s straight forward and easy to make so it’s well worth giving it a go. Here’s MickeS.

Hello all, I’ve been busy making something else than sharp things lately…

Just wanted to show my recently finished wool blanket anorak, inspired by forum threads and youtube clips, amongst others:

I wanted a heavy, no frills anorak with a tight hood, kinda like the Inuits and Evenks make theirs. No zippers, no pockets, no draw cords, nothing extra – just a plain anorak.

The pattern:

I’m 178 cm tall, 85 kg heavy, with a 112 cm chest and 174 cm between my wrists with arms extended. The pattern allows me to wear several layers underneath, and it reaches my middle thighs at the front and almost down to my knees at the back,

The blanke is Heavy, thick and  2100×1530 mm.

I zig-saged all edges and double or triple stitched all seams. It took ca 5 hours (and 2 broken needles and a lot of cursing) to complete it on my mother-in-law’s old Elna sewing machine. The machine coped well with 2 layers, but when it came to 3 or 4 layers I had to hand stitch those short parts.

The body and arms consists of three pieces, one main body/arm piece and two arm extension pieces. These extension pieces I made because the blanket is to narrow for my body and arm lengths.

The hood I made quite tight, out of three parts, one middle strip 120 times ca 600 mm and two sides. No drawstring.

The cut fabric with sewn on arm extensions and the finished hood.

Inside of hood and arms. Flattened seams for less bulk.

The finished anorak.

The hood down.

The hood up.

The hood is so tight that when I push it back a little it will hug my face all around and protect the ears and such and give very good peripheral vision.

And finally with a belt and my favorite winter gloves.

Hope you like it!

Thanks to MickeS and ©BritishBlades for allowing us to use this article

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We love this sort of thing on Outdoor Revival and we’ll be bringing you a lot more of it over the coming months, if you enjoy making or designing kit let us know about it on our FB page, we’re also happy for article or review submissions, we’d love to hear from you.