Sewing Fail (and a vest tutorial)

A couple of years ago one of Hubby's Christmas presents was a hunting vest...or rather, the fabric which I was going to sew up for him.
Yeah, it took me a while...
Anyway, I was determined to get the thing finished for his birthday this year, but something went massively wrong:

(Do I really sound like that? Eww. My voice sounds so much better in my own head.)
I had made reversible vests before, but clearly I had forgotten how to do it. Take heart ye beginners, even we professionals have massive fails sometimes.


In case you ever want to make a reversible vest, here is how to do it right (so that you don't end up with over an hour of unpicking like I did!) Admittedly this tutorial is partly for me, so that I never do this again!!

Sew across the neck, around the armholes, down the fronts, and across the bottom. Do NOT sew the underarm seam, not any part of it.

Reach into one of those long slits where it's left open. (blue arrow)






Then reach through the shoulder section and grab the front panel (yellow star) and pull it out through the shoulder and out the side slit (yellow arrow). Reach through the same side slit and pull the other front panel out.
Voila, the vest is now right side out.
Flatten it all out. Iron things pretty and flat (unless you're working in something like fleece which doesn't iron).
Now pull together those side seams, and sew the 'outsides' together (or, in teh case of a truly reversable vest, rather than just a lined one, choose the side that will show hand-sewing the least and make that the 'inside'). If you are careful and use a few pins, you can sew around the arm seam and the bottom edge seam, and thus close up part of the 'inside' edges by machine too. Of course you'll end up with a gap of a few inches, and that will need to be hand sewn.

See, it's pretty huh? Camo on one side, orange on the other, reversible zipper AND pockets from both sides. Trust me those were not fun to figure out, especially with the open sides thing... but Hubby likes pockets so I made him pockets. He'll wear it more with pockets.