Tayloring rain gear

If all you want to do is shorten the legs as in cut a bit off, fold in and make a seam, I wouldn't seal it down there. It's either protected by gaiters or there is a large hole for your legs where water can and will enter.

Edit: Just looked at my Montane rain pants (made from Event) and they aren't sealed but simple sewn off. Other seams use tape however.

Technically I think memBrain refers to "membranes" since it is a selectively permeable membrane for water phases (and brain conotes "smart" fabric).

As for your seam sealing, you'll likely only be cutting off the bottoms of the pants and maybe installing some new elastic. Seam sealer of any kind will probably work fine for this but since the bottom hem of rain pants usually wets out no matter what, it probably won't be necessary at all. Pant cuffs see a lot of abrasion while hiking from both your legs/feet and the environment. Tis forces water into and through the fabric pretty much no matter what, so don't fret about sealing pant cuffs too much.

Similar but different. Love the eVent but nothing made of eVent comes with vents(pit zips or pant with side zippers). Has anyone added zippers to event pieces?

Ah … right. I thought this would be obvious, but of course it was not. No, any rain pants I would probably buy, including the the Marmot Essence will have a zipper or some other sort of closeable structure at the end that I want to keep. So I'm just gonna *stipulate* that any tailoring will have to be mid leg somewhere. You don't don't get to answer the question by avoiding it. ;)

So assume there is going to be an actual, real seam where thread will poke holes somewhere you don't want holes.

PS. I am also a lover of pit zips.

Don't you just cut the zips to the right length and then add something so the slider can not just fall out? According to the DIY websites I just looked at that seems to be the way to go. Then you still don't need to seal anything because the zip seams are already sealed and you still end up with same thing as above.

If you want to make the legs shorter just cut them off?

Or hem them – fold over twice and sew a row of stitches to hide the raw edge.

Humm, I don't think you can just cut a zipper. Replace a zipper maybe. Ive done it and is is a lot more work than what I'm proposing. Also, let me reiterate that I want the full structure at the end of the legs, and we are talking about taking a (possibly) over-sized pant to start with. So we may be talking about a lot more than an inch of two off the ends. I also might want the articulated knee to actually line up with my knee, and so on.

We are also talking about a very expensive item where I want to custom size them so the final result is like a perfect version of the original sized for me. I *can* see how the method you describe might work great for lots of people, it is just not what I'm interested in in this case. I have hemmed pants at the end a ton of times (I have to or buy kids pants , lol), but that doesn't work for this item.

Lets assume for the moment that I really was serious about wanting to know the answer to the question I asked. Is there a good way the reseal the seams on this material. Guess I could call Marmot. Anyone tried to do something similar?

Full Disclosure, in addition to knowing how to hem the ends of pants, I have done many a hack job (in desperation) on nylon hiking pants over the years by cutting off the ends and using a lighter to seal the threads. I feel I have genuine hack-job street-cred… I'm just trying to rise above my station on this one!

I think I will probably risk just buying them, and if silicone sealer doesn't bind I can just peal it off and try something else.

Yes, there is. Basically you need some type of seam tape. Something like this: http://www.extremtextil.de/catalog/Seamtape-for-3-layer-fabrics-22mm::862.html?language=en The exact type depends on how much layers the pants are made of. The linked one is for 3 layer material, there is also some for 2 layer materials. Not sure where to get them though.

If you want to move the articulated knees I would think about making pants from scratch. Guides are here at BPL. Search for "myog event" for example.

For the lower hems and the zipper here are a couple pictures from my pants. It really doesn't seem to be rocket science and yes, you can just cut the zips. Add a bit of molten plastic to stop the slider and see the last picture for a commercial product.

Point taken about the zipper. Anyway, I think there are may be snaps with an elastic cuff on the Essence pants.

"If you want to move the articulated knees I would think about making pants from scratch. Guides are here at BPL. Search for "myog event" for example."

Definitely not there yet! I think the basic tailoring operation doing what I actually want to do without messing with the main features like cuffs and zippers is not too much much more difficult than hemming. Its basically two s-folds – one above and below each knee – that bring both the length of the legs and the position of the knee to the right place. Stitch through all three layers on each of the fold edges – 4 per leg. Seal seams on inside. Done.

…Provided they can be easily sealed on this material.

But I'm sure for some the risk to the waterproofing might be too much to try to do it this way. Its all very frustrating since I basically can not buy any pants that fit perfectly, and I get tired of "making do".

P.S. Link looks interesting. I didn't know you could even buy that stuff in small quantities. Do you use a heat gun to apply it? Would it stick to an iron?

Edit: This helped a lot: http://sewaholic.net/guest-post-caroline-on-sewing-waterproof-outerwear/

Good link

I think Caroline is maybe several levels more advanced seamster than me : )

If you don't want zipper to seperate, like the bottom of a jacket, just cut off zipper, melt edge, sew enough loops of thread (20?) until zipper pull won't pass.

I've tried those stops but they're too difficult, easier and looks just as good to do loops of thread.

edit: that was confusing:

The bottom of jacket zipper seperates. No way to cut down zipper and re-apply a seperating bottom, requires some machine. Only thing to do is remove entire zipper, shorten zipper at top, and re-sew zipper.

Pants – just cut off and put on zipper stop – either hardware or loops of thread