Want to know how to design sleeves? Sleeves are often the show-stealers on a garment. How many times have you bought a sewing pattern because you just loved “that sleeve!”? In this course, we show you how to take any standard top or shirt sleeve and hack it into any design you want. Feel like a fashion designer and create the statement sleeves of your dreams!
If you have always wanted to learn how to design sleeves, this is the course for you! We cover everything you need to know to get great fitting sleeves with lots of personality. We teach you just enough of the basics of pattern drafting to allow you to create 12 different sleeve designs that can be as subtle or dramatic as you wish.
We’ll start by talking you through some important sleeve fitting issues to ensure that whatever sleeve you choose to hack starts out with a great fit.
Follow along with any full size pattern and dive straight into creating your designs. Or get lots of practice first using the half size templates provided in your course downloads. All measurements are provided in metric, imperial, full and half size so you can work however you choose.
We’ll cover several different lengths of sleeve including short, elbow, 3/4 and long. We walk you through designs where only the sleeve requires adjustment but we will also explain when and why bodice adjustments are also necessary.
Starting with a simple flared sleeve, we’ll progress onto the iconic Bishop sleeve before showing you how to create cuffs for both upper arm and wrist. Borrowing from our Companion To Shirtmaking course, you’ll get templates you can use to make a variety of sleeve openings as well as full instruction for how to create them. Then we’ll move onto puff sleeves, lantern sleeves, darted head sleeves and the famous Leg O Mutton sleeve giving you endless opportunities for design.
Once you’ve got the basics mastered, we’ll move onto some more tricky designs including how to drop the shoulder, how to add a grown on sleeve, how to change a standard top to a raglan design and how to create a dolman and a batwing.
We’ll show you in detail how each pattern is drafted and how it looks when it is sewn up, plus we will talk you through the construction process for each design with downloads to help.
Click on any lesson marked “SAMPLE LESSON” to preview the study mode…
You do not need specialist equipment to follow along with this class. You will probably have most of the items you need in your sewing space or somewhere in your home. However, these are all of the items we use during the class:
★ printed copies of our downloadable miniature patterns OR the sewing pattern you want to use
★ straight rulers (in either metric or imperial)
★ curved ruler, french curves or dressmaker's ruler (we used a set of 3 mini ones from eBay)
★ a sharp pencil (with eraser & sharperner)
★ tape (we used Magic Tape by 3M)
★ pattern paper, art paper or any large paper big enough to give you extra space all around your pattern
★ a tape measure
★ paper scissors