Sewing Cafe

Patterns, Tutorials and Works in Progress from the Sewing Studio of Lynne Williams

Sunday, February 5, 2012

Sleeve pattern correction

Remember my annoyance with this sleeve hem ?  Your hems in general should be level with your wrist or if its a skirt parallel to the floor. This is always the case unless you have an obvious design feature as seen with the new swallowtail hems or those elegant sleeve points which fall down over the hand and attach to your ring finger.

But I am looking for a standard and correct sleeve hem and so I will need to make some adjustments to my Eva Dress 7482 pattern.  So lets begin.....


This is what my sleeve hem looked like after making up the muslin.  The dotted line is my hem line.  The seam running up the center is my underarm seam which forms the placket at the hem.  In modern patterns the placket is sewn as a extra piece.  On this vintage pattern the buttons are purely decorative and this little placket closes up with a few snaps. 



I begin by pinning my sleeve seam together along the stitch line.  I can/need only do this for a few inches. Its a little awkward as it does not want to lay flat if I continue pinning to far up the seam.  
Once I do this I can see that where the seam lays, it needs to be about 3/8" longer to be even with the front hemline.


Because my pattern tracing is done on household wax paper I can simply take a strip of wax paper and add it to the sleeve hem by pressing with an iron.
If you use paper of course you can tape your strip on.


Now I re-pin my sleeve seam....

 
Turn it over and cut through all layers along the front hem cutting line.
In this picture you can see where the buttons are supposed to go.


 I open my sleeve once again and I can see my new curved hem line.
Now  I trim the excess wax paper off the sleeve seam.


This is my new correctly shaped hem and my sleeve is ready to be cut out:)

By the way that is my blouse fabric that the pattern is laying on, my favorite shade of red

Do you have pattern alterations that you commonly make that are not related to fitting?


2 comments:

  1. That's brilliant in its simplicity! In a way, I'm happy that I just don't care for tailored garments all that much, so I don't have any usual non-fitting adjustments of that sort, but I can see where an adjustment like this might come in handy.

    All I need do is remember it when I need it lol

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  2. Wow - that is amazing! Posts like this remind me of how much I have to learn... Thanks for the offer of tips on sewing doll clothes! I'd love any hints you would be willing to pass along... Is there a book that would be helpful? I did a search on Amazon and found lots with patterns for 18" dolls, but I was hoping for one that focused more on advice for how sewing doll clothes differed from sewing for people (and Mattie is 24"). I did see one on sewing Victorian doll clothes and almost got that because of our project... ;) Thanks! :)

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