Combining rain pants in gaiters into 1 product

When you lift you legs up, your pants go up.

If they were gaiters also, then there'de be a big gap at the bottom, at your boots

My gaiters stay in position against my boots. I pull my pants up so they sort of balloon at my knees, just above the gaiters, when my legs are straight. When I bend my leg, it takes out all the slack over my kneecap.

I'm not saying integrated pants/gaiters wouldn't work, but this is a consideration

I did not think about that at all. This is likely the reason why the manufacturer didn't go down this road. Thanks for clarifying :-)

My rain/over pants have elastic around the cuff and two grommets with shock cord running
under the boot. Works fine with 6" tall or higher boots. The shock cord needs to be replaced
each month or so of use.

You do lose the ability to wear gaiters with shorts in warm weather.

I don't sell them because there was no interest by customers.

(Sorry bad english – I'am finnish red neck)

If you want to compine trousers and gaiters it reminds me old style (military) fashion. Fabric cut was totally different.

In 18th century, US continental army 'trousers' were like breeches of same era but trousers covered whole leg, and almost skin tight fit. Those trousers were called Overalls.

"Breeches were typically made of woven fabric, with leather (esp. for hunting) and (rarely) knit fabric as alternatives. Fitted clothing generally became tighter as the century progressed, with skin-tight legs being the fashion for breeches for most of the century. To allow the wearer to sit or bend over, breeches were cut loose in the seat; this unsightly bagginess was generally covered by the coat and only revealed by those laboring so hard that they removed their coat, or by men dressed in very lower class garments such as jackets."

Here is the Old Guard Fife and Drum Corps using "overalls"

"i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2012/03/14/article-2114886-122A2BD4000005DC-657_636x853.jpg"

Maybe 18th c. overall is right direction. If someone knows how breeches behave when sitting down etc…

Nice picture. Fine English.

If one of those guys lifts his leg, there will be a gap of several inches below bottom and the socks/boots.

Oh! There's Obama. Demonstrating his foreign policy experience.

Picture of my gaiters. You can see the pants billowed up at top so I can lift my leg:

I've fooled around with this concept quite a bit and always give up, primarily because of the trouser/gaitor problem that Jerry describes.

Here are a few thoughts, however, for discussion purposes

(1) Gaitors can be worn for a lot of reasons and the design depends on why they are being worn. My current goal, for example, is primarily aimed at keeping mosquitoes from biting my ankles between my shoes and my pants.

(2) Blousing the pants with elastic bands works well but requires a higher topped boot than my current running shoes. Look at Marine Corp bloused trousers for photos.

(3) Adding a thin nylon tube to the top of my hiking shoes and blousing the trousers over them might work.

(4) Wearing longer trousers with a slight bell to the bottom and no bottom elastic allows the fabric to drape over the shoe. This helps a bit with the bugs. The look is similar to the Obama photo with the white pant strutting guys.

I have thinking this problem with seamstress and she said that it should be possible. Although we disagree from 'ass area'… :)

Put on ordinary, tight and non-stretching fabric pants. Do some squats and you see problem areas that has to be solved – these are your buttocks and your knees.

1) Your buttocks is tightening fabric from 'ass area' and also from front of the thights.

2) Your knee is tightening fabric from front of the knee.

1 plus 2 lifts your trousers up, exposing ankle.

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Soldiers in that Obama photo are using 18th century "overalls", but they may not to be 100% historical accurate, but use photo as inspiration. If you solving problems 1 and 2, then your trousers will get shape of 18th c. style, AND they get more uggly than in Obama photo.

Here is my solution:

1a) Your buttocks area must have extra fabric, making trousers baggy.
1b) Because trousers get baggy from behind, it may cause problems, example making fabric saggy behind your thight.
1c) To solve saggy fabric, trousers have to be 'slim fit' from the thights.

2a) Front of the knee is needing extra fabric.
2b) To solve this, you can make some kind of fabric folds to knee area (trousers front piece), or something like that.
2c) Fabric may become saggy from front of the knee, but I don't think that it is problem.
2d) Because your trousers are almost skin tight in your thights, it may be better to make trousers slim fit below the knee or your trousers will look very weird…

Ankle area should look like more or less like Obama photo, maybe little tighter. You may use shoe laces behind ankle to make fabric tighter in the ankle area, and it gives some flexibility if you use different shoes.

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You can sacrifice 10 dollars to Overalls pattern and modify it if you want. There is two types of breeches (and overalls) – with fly and "drop front". Pattern below seems to be with drop front.

http://www.amazon.com/18th-Century-Military-Overalls-Pattern/dp/B002O7DN2E/ref=pd_sxp_f_pt

There is many historical breeches pattern in the internet, but if you are intrested, I can email some pattern material to you. From breeches pattern, it should be fairly easy to make full Overalls. !!!! Pattern of historical trousers/breeches is totally different than in modern trousers!!!!

Two things to remember:

1: your trousers will be ugly.
2: sew first trousers from cheap fabric

Jarno,

Good review of the problem.

"2a) Front of the knee is needing extra fabric." US Military surplus pant liners address this type of problem with what I think they call an "articulated knee" They've gathered up some fabric in small tucks.

"1: your trousers will be ugly." This made me laugh. My wife says everything I wear while backpacking is ugly.

Daryl

I know this is years old… but it’s what I’m also thinking about at the moment. Gaiters and rain pants. Daryl and Daryl I think are thinking along some good lines. I made a pair of very loose fitting snow gaiters that I like a lot. They have two cinch cords. One at the ankle and one above the knee. Don’t we kneel down in the snow sometimes?? Seems pretty obvious to me.

For Scottish highland bog slogging I was just going to take these gaiters, but all the webbing I used added a lot of weight. Plus the material is not quite waterproof (think it’s some kind of poly-plastic ripstop I got from Joann’s Fabrics). So just make another pair. But could I make them better?

A couple of days ago I wondered if I might be able to make a pair of gaiters using neoprene at the bottom-very tight up to just above my ankle. Then some other lighter weight but waterproof material above this to above my knee. And how about a neoprene patch to cushion my knees? Playing with my Keen waterproof Detroit something something boots, and a yard of 3mm neoprene it seems absolutely feasible to make a tight enough seal to the boot top to keep out water. Maybe not 100%. (Look at it the other way: a bucket wider mouth easier to capture water, tiny slit not much water at all).

To address Daryl and Daryls’ objective. Rain pants that are also gaiters. This is to keep shoes and socks dry from splashes and falling rain. The issue of they’d either be too tight or too baggy–good point. If they cinched at the ankle and were a bit baggy above that, they’d work. (Style? Just don’t wear them to your bosses’ wedding.) I wonder though about strong winds and baggy pants. For this you could make them quite trim to just below the knee and cinch them above the calf, they’d have to be baggy and a bit over long above to allow for bending at the knee. I hope you went for it. It’s an excellent idea to combine two bits of gear sometimes worn together, but which could also aways be worn together.

We all google and google and google and often as not never quite find what we’re looking for. Gaiters. Seems the companies have spent more time making sure you can put them on without taking off your boots than actually making them better. WWI military gaiters. These seem to be worn very tight. Millions of men in trenches incessant water and mud. If anyone advanced the gaiter it had to be them. Yet no modern gaiter really looks like what they were doing. (They had an additional problem: mud and water entering from the top. They had to lay down in the stuff. They also didn’t have the amazing materials we now have.

Limitation of neoprene. My at hand neoprene is Spandex on both sides. The spandex is going to wick water, not ideal. I think a thicker softer neoprene against the boot top would do much better. Advantages of neoprene: Just fiddling with a piece of it what I see is the stretched-contact area of the neoprene is quite wide. Laces and tongue are a complicated area. I think with some effort and skill, with possible slight mod to the boot top: a bead of silicone around the covered area to seal against, maybe a bit of foam or neoprene in the tongue and laces… , I think it should absolutely be possible to make gaiters that could keep out a foot of immersion or at least minimize so much that gaiters like these would be worth the effort. I have a only a couple of weeks and dozens of other things to do, and I’m really not at all skilled at coming up with the best cutting pattern for the neoprene.  Currently I’m working with a ‘jacket’ type pattern (my term) wraps around from the back, glues together in the front (like a zipper on a jacket)–a lot of tension across this seam. Another idea is to make a ‘brim’ roughly an oval with a cut-out for my ankle and a tube going up my ankle. This immediately has unified strength against the tension of the laces hood and the under-boot tie. (I just might use stainless steel cable for this. I have it and the tools on hand. I was also thinking of dyneema line. If the line or webbing I think I’ll make ‘threaded through D-rings on both sides so I can replace it if it gets damaged) Anyway, anxiety delays me from cutting neoprene and immediately discovering ten things I hadn’t considered. …