I've been working a bit on sleeves for the Venetian gown. We were out of town this weekend, so sewing was pretty much limited to what could be done by hand in the car. I want a fairly fitted sleeve with a paned top. The pictures below show the first couple of steps in the process. The sleeves are going to have three layers. The inner is the lining fabric from the bodice, which will show some as the panes move. The outer is the dress fabric. The middle is a layer of duck (mustard-colored in the pictures below) that is only extending down as far as the panes to give them a little stiffness. I left it out of the bottom half of the sleeves because it's going to be hot enough already. I experimented a bit with how to make panes without the fabric fraying all to bits and found that I got the best results by stitching the three layers together with a narrow machine zigzag before cutting. I have many yards of a thin grosgrain in a matching color that I'm going to use to bind the edges, but I found that trying to do that without the machine stitching underneath just caused everything to tear itself to pieces.
Before we left for the weekend, I got the sleeves themselves cut out and sewn onto the lining layers. While travelling, I cut the edges and attached the ribbon binding. I hadn't had time to do the zigzag on the pane cuts, and my one attempt to do this by hand convinced me that this would be an excellent way to shred my sleeves, so that's where I quit for the weekend.
I also did a little tinkering with beads. I'm going to put pearl clusters at the top and bottom of each slit on the sleeves, partly for decoration and partly because I think that the sewing is going to get a bit ugly right there. Here are some examples. I have enough of these for the sleeves.
2 comments:
Awesome bead idea!
I am impressed with the sleeves, but I think i'll need an IM tutorial on how they work. ;-) I have no idea which way is up. hehe
See, I've been avoding sleeves since I honestly don't know how to shape the armpit hole (i'm aware that this has a special name, but i can't remember it).
Can't wait to see the outcome!
Curvy end is up. It's kind of a sinusoidal shape. I think. I hope. I'm going to tie these on only at the top half anyway for ventilation's sake, so we'll just hope for the best.
I read someone's tip that you take a modern sleeve pattern, hack off somewhere between 1/4 and 1/3 of one side, then tape it onto the other side to make a period-ish sleeve with a back seam.
I made this sleeve pattern by measuring around my arm at several points for width, then measuring the distance top to bottom of the armscythe for the amount of "cap" at the top. I drew this out on Christmas wrapping paper, then started hacking it to bits and adding and subtracting and....blah blah blah. It took a number of muslin cutouts to get it close, particularly since I hadn't considered how much extra bulk the big chemise sleeves add. I've wrapped this version around my arm and it seems about right. I hope!
Post a Comment