I love polar fleece jackets. You can wear them indoors or out, in a wide variety of temperatures, and they work great as a base layer under a winter coat. For all their strengths though, they are useless in wind and campfire sparks quickly burn little holes in them.
I decided to try to improve on the polar fleece jacket, specifically in the context of camping. It should be warm in cool weather but cool in warm weather, wear resistant, wind blocking, and not hamper your movements. If you fall into a stream or get caught in a downpour, it should not get waterlogged and heavy, and it should dry quickly. When hunkering over a campfire, it shouldn't melt or become riddled with burn holes.
Below are my sketches thus far. Feel free to comment on the practicality, attractiveness, comfort, or anything else.
Windbreak/spark defense - The only material I could find that shed water quickly and was also resistant to sparks was aramid (of which kevlar and nomex are both examples). I found a 9 oz./sq. yd. nomex fabric with kevlar rip-stop reinforcing threads on ebay for cheap. I bought two colors, black and wheat tan. As an added bonus, it's been treated with some sort of water resistant coating which causes water to bead up and run off. Blowing through it reveals that the breathability is not quite as good as I had hoped - probably due to the water resistant coating.
Insulation/wicking - I intend to use regular polar fleece for this layer. I will probably use a thin 100 class cloth rather than a thicker 200 or 300 as the aramid cloth I purchased is likely to be pretty warm on its own.
Abrasion resistance - I stumbled across a neat product called Super Fabric. It is many times more abrasion resistant than kevlar cloth because it has small plastic beads or scales cast directly onto the fibers. In order to abrade the fibers, one must first wear through a significant amount of plastic scale. You can find their website here http://superfabric.com/
I sliced up an existing jacket to give me a starting point for pattern. I wanted different seam lines and a different fit, so it was more complicated than just ripping the existing seams. From this I made my first muslin, but I didn't like the results. I made a much better pattern by cutting up an old fitted dress shirt and that muslin was almost perfect.
