Sleeve Mock 1

Hello again,

Work has been a little bit crazy again but my grand finale deadline is coming up fast.  I am trying to get myself in gear to work on my Renaissance dress a little more.  As can be seen Isabelle is trying to help me out.

With the pattern alterations for the bodice top finalized, the focus this time was on the sleeve.  I have had some but very little experience with sleeves.  Overall I prefer sleeveless with an added sweeter when needed, however, Maid Marion would not run around with bare arms.  Unlike the sleeves that I have had experience with, the sleeves for this dress are more fitted.  Add to this the fact that I am technically larger than the pattern's size range, I was completely unsure how well the sleeves would fit me from the get-go.  However, there was no other choice but to simply jump in and do it.  This being said I was only going to bother with testing out one sleeve at a time.

Using my light board I copied the original pattern onto "junk" paper.  Then I used a hole puncher where the pattern had circle reference points.  Now it was ready to be cut.

Isabelle put down the pattern weights for me.  Afterwards I took my wonderful Rotary Cutter and cut out the pattern, and used my regular fabric shears to remove the reference triangles.

When the excess fabric and paper removed, it was time to do a rubbing of the hole punched reference circles with a "Red" Tailors chalk (honestly it looks pink to me).

These reference circles are for gatherings to attach the sleeve to the shoulder-armpit area, and around the elbow.  I don't understand or see the point to the elbow gathers, so chances are very high that I'm not going to use those.

With that complete, I marked the shoulder gather point with colored pins.  Then using the Colette's gather trick, 3 lines of long stitches were ran between the 2 pins.

When the 3 lines of gather stitches were in place, it was safe to stitch up the long seam of the sleeve.  Once that task was complete it was time to attach the sleeve to the shoulder-armpit area.  It took me a little bit to figure out how exactly the 2 attached to each other, but I did.  Fortunately for me, I had not sewn the 2 together prior to figuring this out.  All that I had to do was to turn the sleeve right-side out and pin it to the inside of the sleeve matching up the corresponding triangles. 

Now it was time to try it on... 

  

The upper bicep was too tight.  I was unable to fully zip up the bodice, because it was too tight.  So I removed the sleeve from the bodice.  It wasn't going to do me any good if I kept it there.  After I removed the sleeve, I measured the Upper Bicep.  Excluding the seam allowance, it was 15 inches.  The previous time that my bicep was measured, I was at 16 inches.  Yep, it was no wonder that I couldn't zip up the top.  Even though I was quite distracted by the tightness of the upper bicep, nothing else about the sleeve screamed out that it required more adjusting.  So from the looks of things, I need to complete a fullness alteration for my upper bicep.  According to the Colette Sewing Handbook, this is a common alteration, however, because too many alterations exist this one was not included in the book.  I know the jist of what I need to do, because of my Full Bust Adjustment (FBA), I only have to search a little bit to discover specifically how to go about it.

Well that's it for this past week.  I am hoping that this sleeve will not take up too much time and effort.  Fingers crossed.

Until next week...

(The sleeve is also snug on Isabelle's Dress Form)