The presence of life jackets on the ship is a requirement of the State Inspection for Small Vessels. Every participant in a water trip or boat trip should have a vest. The captains take care of the safety of passengers on cruise ships, but a participant in a kayak trip should think about life-saving equipment himself. You can sew a life jacket with your own hands.
What to sew from
You need a waterproof fabric - calendered nylon or lavsan, bologna, etc. You can make a life jacket out of an old windbreaker or jacket by rebuffing the sleeves and slightly widening the neckline. The fabric should be enough to fit two vests just below the waist. It is better to choose a material that is bright, clearly visible on the water. Foam is most suitable as a filler. You can also use plastic bottles (but they need to be sealed to keep air from escaping). However, the bottles are not very convenient, because they can break under mechanical stress. Sometimes children use rubber toys or balloons to make vests. But foam is still most suitable, since it does not lose its properties with mechanical damage. You will also need a piece of parachute line or synthetic tape and 1-3 carabiners or plastic buckles.
Cut open
Unpick the jacket, remove the threads. Expand the armhole and neckline by about 1 cm (just cut off the allowances). Cut the styrofoam into strips approximately 10 cm wide. The strips will be inserted across, so the length should be the same as the width of the shelf or back. The foam must be thick. You can cut it with an ordinary sharp knife, having previously marked it on a ruler with a ballpoint pen. The knife blade should be located strictly perpendicular to the plane of the sheet. Cut out the pockets along the stripes. These are rectangles. The width of each is equal to the width of the strip with doubled sheet thickness added to it. Pockets are located over the entire surface of the vest. It is especially important that they are in the upper part (on the shoulders and along the neckline), so that even in the event of loss of consciousness, the person's head remains above the water. Leave 1 cm allowances on all sides of the rectangles. It is most convenient to cut synthetic fabric with a burner or a soldering iron; in this case, you do not need to overcast the seams. Think about how many fasteners there will be. Maybe just one - on the belt. Cut 2 pieces of 25 cm from the parachute line. Sew buckles to the ends.
Assembly
Mark the pockets on all the details. Fold the allowances on the pockets themselves and iron very carefully to the wrong side. Baste the workpieces along the marked lines, but only on one side (for example, only the upper parts of the pockets or only the lower ones), and then stitch, but only up to the allowances of the side seams. Sew on the strips on the second sides. Top off shoulder and side seams. Insert Styrofoam and seal holes. Sew on the belt with buckles.
