"Tab" ulation

As I mentioned in my previous blog entry I was not happy with the way the tabs themselves were coming out....they were not uniform and the angles were not correct.   They were definitely wonkie.  I would rotary cut them out, come in 1/4" from the edge and sew.  The next one I would cut it out and then would draw the sewing lines on it  1/4" from the edge thinking they were wonkie because I was not maintaining a 1/4" seam allowance.....none of this worked.  Sometimes when I sleep on a problem, a solution will present itself the next morning.  What I saw the next morning is that I obviously was not cutting it out properly, the angles were off so what I needed to do was NOT cut out the tab until AFTER I sewed it together, to draw the sewing lines on the fabric, sew it, and then cut it out.  I knew the tab was to be an inch wide, how long it needed to be and there were 45 degree points on each side so I took my square ruler and a white colored pencil and did the lay out (see photo). I carefully stitched it leaving an opening to turn it right side out through, THEN I cut it out and turned it right side out and though it was not perfect, it was defiantly better.  This is the method I used for cutting out the other 4 tabs I would need. 

They other thing that gave me conniptions with the first vest was getting the tabs to line up properly.  On this vest I used nylon thread and sewed the tab onto side A, flipped the vest over to side B where I could see where the first tab was stitched, lined up its opposite tab the best I could to the stitching , pinned it in place and then stitched it.   This seemed like a better method than pinning both tabs in place and attempting to keep them lined up while I sewed them in place.