The Great Cape Adventure: Stitch, Rip, Stitch.

I had my first epic sewing fail on The Great Cape Adventure.  I was following my directions swimmingly, quite proud of my little pocket entry edging, had beautifully slip stitched the inside piece of my pocket bag to the pocket hole, basted it to my cape, then perfectly top stitched the pocket bag in place.  I basted my welt flap in place, sewed my front and side pieces together.... and bam!  Something felt wrong.  I went to work the next day googled on my own time pictures of welt pockets and other finished capes.  I learned my welt pockets are special and the general rules do not apply to my cape.  I studied pictures.  Then it dawned on me.

I put the pockets on the wrong piece.

Well.  Crap.  The pockets are to be attached to the front pieces, and I attached them to the side pieces.  I made my perfect pocket openings and cut into my beautiful fabric on the wrong side.  Now it makes sense that when I sewed the front and back pieces together with my welt flap in place, the hole and pocket didn't really flow.

Ahhhhhh.

Well, that's okay.  It had to come sometime.  So, I spent the next evening carefully ripping out my perfect stitches.  Since I had already cut into my fabric to make my pocket opening on the wrong side, I needed to improvise in order to fix it.  Luckily this turned out easier and lovelier than I could have hoped.  Maybe even better than the original instructions!

I sewed the welt flap under the original pocket opening that I had made.  I correctly installed the pocket bags on the front pieces.  Sewed together the front to the side front, and TADA!  Now the welt flap lies perfectly over the pocket hole, while also allowing one's arm out from the cape.  That might not make sense, let me explain.  The arm hole and pocket hole are one in the same.  But the pocket hole gets covered by the welt flap where the arm comes out.  Follow?  Okay.

So.  Lesson learned.  Don't watch Breaking Bad while trying to read weird pattern instructions.  You'll likely become BFF's with your seam ripper if you do.