I’ve worn a wax jacket (a coat made from waxed cotton cloth, for those of you who aren’t Terminally Outdoors) for the last thirty-plus years. Over that time, I’ve had a total of four, I think, and transferred over the contents of the pockets each time. I think of it as the same one, but it’s only on the Ship of Theseus principle — and now it has a new component. Read on… or check out the page header image for a spoiler, I suppose.
The class signifiers of a wax jacket are All Over The Place in the UK. But then again, my own class background is as well. I’ve never worn an actual Barbour, because the label’s never been worth the extra cost, but that’s the traditional huntin-fishin-shootin-drinkin-classes’ wear — and in recent years, it’s also gained quite the reputation for wear by the kind of flash working class that get smeared as chavs, neds, schemies, or scallies. This kind of trickle-down fashion, where the brand’s customer base doesn’t fit well with its self-image, is wonderful to watch.
When I was eighteen or so, I wrote a poem entitled ‘Ode to the Poet’s Wax Jacket’ which has thankfully been lost to the mists of time, or at least if I ever find it again it certainly will be. When you’re growing up in rural Wales and spending a lot of time around animals, you quickly get really thankful for something that will keep rain, wind, hay, manure, and all the other annoyances away from your clothes and skin, and which has plenty of pockets for all the little necessities of life like warm gloves, polo mints, hoofpicks, baler twine, notebooks, biscuits, and interesting stones.
The first three coats I had, I had to replace when the waxed cotton itself ripped —most recently, on a roadtrip north. A bramble bush near Hexham finally did for the coat, and a shop in Callander gave me the one I’ve had for the last ten years. The broad-brimmed hat I got in Mallaig to go with it has since been replaced, but the coat’s still going strong… on the outside, at least.
I’ve been watching a lot of sewing and costumery on the youtube recently, and I started thinking: I’ve been walking around with holes in the lining of my coat for months. I can actually do something about that. It may not be structurally important, but it will make me feel better, and repairing My Own Actual Clothes is both much easier than it sounds, and doesn’t have to be perfect to work perfectly. So I cued up some Bernadette Banner videos, and set to work. (Bernadette, if you ever read this — huge fan, my dodgy stitching is all my own fault, one day I really will make something from scratch, promise!)
The ripped and fraying polycotton lining is definitely something I can work with. So I had a look in the fabric stash — lots of basics, but nothing fancy, and if I’m putting a patch into my coat lining I definitely want fancy. Then I remembered that I have a whole load of primed cotton canvas. So we can go just as fancy as we like, with about half an hour’s work and some acrylic paint. This was a really good excuse to try out something new, too — I recently discovered that Liquitex, one of my favourite paint brands, offer their thinner formulation paint in marker form. So that’s what I used to draw this tree, over a green background. (The colour’s sold as “pale olive green”, but I’m not at all sure that’s how I’d describe it. It’s more… slightly trodden spring grass.)
Whilst I may be optimistic, I’m not going to try hand-stitching heavy canvas with three layers of acrylic paint without pre-piercing stitching holes, so out comes the awl I got when I was teaching myself bookbinding. I didn’t account for the slipperiness of the canvas, though, so the ruler-straight line of holes every 5mm apart… isn’t. It’s close enough for something only I’m ever going to see, though, and next time I’m doing this I’ll know how to make it work even better. Since the remaining fabric is so soft and light, it was easy to stitch right-side-to-right-side so that when everything’s turned back properly it hides the seams. (Running stitch, with a backstitch every half-dozen stitches or so on the forward edge for a bit of extra strength. The canvas is strong and smooth enough that nothing will catch on it enough to pull that hard, so it doesn’t need the strength a full back stitch would give. I used linen bookbinding thread for strength, since the edges of the canvas would not be at all good for ordinary sewing thread.)
So here’s the result! I put the coat on, and went for a walk, and I didn’t notice the difference at all. Now to deal with the even bigger hole on the other side of the lining…
If you’d like to support my work, and read my previous articles in the same vein before I copy them across, please visit my Patreon — https://www.patreon.com/MaterialsAlchemy I promise I’ll spend it on coffee and books!
