Today we have a really great guest post! I came upon An's blog a little while ago and quickly fell in love with her beautiful sewing creations and darling little girl. Go take a look, and be prepared to be amazed (and wish you had a daughter to sew pretty things for). Thanks, An!
Hi
everyone, I’m An from StraightGrain, and I’m so happy to be able to share a
tutorial here at the Sisterhood! This tutorial will show you how to turn regular
raglan sleeves into the ones you see in the pictures below. It’s a really
simple technique, but the finished result looks quite complicated to people who
don’t sew themselves, so you should get a lot of "ooh"s and "aah"s when you show
them the finished dress. Let’s all agree here and now that we will never admit that
it’s actually pretty easy, okay?
The
technique I use to create the sleeves is one which is often used in duvet
covers and cushion covers: twisted pintucking. Mie of You and Mie also recently used it for her
faboulous breezy top.
What you
start from, is an existing pattern with simple raglan sleeves (could be a
dress, or a tunic). There are many tutorials for raglan sleeve dresses which
have elastic in the collar, which gathers the fabric. This will not combine
well with the pintucks. However, you can use such a pattern, and make the
collar smaller by putting pleats in it, instead of an elastic (as I did here,
for example).
Okay, now
let’s get started!
1. Cut out
a piece of fabric that is a few centimeters broader than your sleeve pattern,
and (almost) three times as long.
2. Now,
we’ll make the pleats. I used pleats of about 1 cm (0.4 inch), but you can use
whatever width you like. Just a tip: if you use striped or gingham fabric, you
might want to rely on the print of the fabric rather than on your ruler – it
makes things even easier. As you might have already noticed, I also used a
fabric with lines.
Start by making
the marks at the edges of the fabric. Fold your fabric with the wrong sides
together, matching up every first and third mark. Stitch. The third picture
below shows what the pleats should look like. Iron the pleats down.
IMPORTANT: Make
sure that you don’t make too many pleats! At the top (the shoulder), you should
have enough space to finish the seam (e.g., to double fold inwards, or to put
on bias, depending on the pattern you use) PLUS space for folding up the first
of your pleat (see the pic step 4 if you don’t know what I mean). So, for
instance, if you plan to use 1
cm of bias to finish the collar, and you made pleats of 1 cm, your first pleat should
stay at least 2 cm from the edge.
At the
other end of the sleeve (the bottom) you should also leave enough space for
finishing the seam.
3. Pin your
pattern carefully, and cut out your sleeves. Run some stitches near the edges
of the sleeves, so that the pleats will stay in place in the next steps.
4. Now
comes the fun part: find the middle of your sleeve by folding it in half, and
press with your fingers. This will create a helpful little crease. Next, lift
all the pleats upward, and pin. Finally, stitch a straight line from bottom to
top on the crease you created.
5. Your
origami sleeve is ready! Now you just have to assemble the dress or top as you would
usually do.
I hope you
will enjoy making the sleeves as much as I did. Thank you so much for having
me, crafty sisters!
