An end-of-June check-in

[nou]

Hello sewists! What have you all been up to recently?

I finally finished making test sleeves and made a REAL clothing item with ACTUAL sleeves, and all of that long slog was 100% worth it because they’re the most amazing sleeves I’ve ever made. They fit me beautifully and they have a great range of motion. The first day I wore the top, I couldn’t stop staring at them in the mirror because they’re so good. (Overall it took about 9 or 10 test sleeves to get this result, but that’s OK because now I have enough muslin scraps to do more dyeing.)

The pattern is now completely unlike any sleeve pattern I’ve seen before, since it has a dart in the sleeve cap and another dart in the back seam. Long sleeves do sometimes have elbow darts, especially in couture, but this is a short sleeve which ends at the elbow and hence traditionally would not have any darts at all.

(If anyone else is aware of other sleeve patterns with darts in these places, or discussion of doing so, please point me at it! I’ve tried googling to find other people’s thoughts on doing this, but have drawn a blank so far.)

Comments

[via_ostiense]

Your top sounds great! What's the pattern?

[a_natural_beauty]

Congrats on the sleeves! That sounds impressive! :-) Be proud of yourself!
Not much is up with me, I've been working on staying cool in this new summer heat.

[shermarama]

I'm immediately thinking of two-piece sleeves, like you get on coats and jackets, and wondering if those do some of the same job as your darts, but in a different way? The shaping doesn't look obvious when you look at the flat pieces, but having made a two-part sleeve for my overcoat, I know as soon as I sewed the pieces together they had obvious shape and form - they would no longer sit flat, were obviously handed, and were generally exuding sleeve-y personality even before I did any gathering / easing at the top. I'm also thinking of what I learned from Fit For Real People, the pattern-modifying book I use for making full-bust adjustments - because that often involves adding extra darts, they suggest a bunch of ways to move the darts to somewhere less visible, like effectively shifting them off into a seam somewhere else. (Raglan seams being particularly magic for this - they look simple, but can be doing a whole lot.)

For my own stuff, I've only been doing some preliminaries for now, but it's the time of year when Aussie pattern companies have offers on for EOFY, and that includes the one I've been buying a lot of stretch-fabric patterns from, Waves and Wild - I've bought a pattern for some joggers, which I think will have some quite general-purpose use. It's for fabrics with smaller amounts of stretch, like as low as 10%, and that means some people have used it for office-wear in something like a heavy ponte knit... But first I'm going to try using the double-sided merino / poly / elastane I got super-cheap a while ago, to make some comfy winter trousers for around the house, and if those work I should be able to use the same pattern to make my partner some close-fitting merino joggers, for wear while cycling, and then we'll see what else.

Also I saw a post elsewhere that put me on to this pattern, the Riley Crossover Bra: https://www.radpatterns.com/product/riley-crossover-bra/ I honestly had thought I had my bra issues sorted, with the Superstar Bra pattern, but a) that seems to have been a contributor to damaging my shoulder and b) it's hard to get those bras on *while* I've got a damaged shoulder. Riley's gimmick is including instructions for making it front-fastening, so you put it on like a waistcoat, and I'm trying a test version of this in random leftover athletic stretch fabric. If that works... I'm wondering if a version in the thick merino/nylon leggings fabric I bought would fly? Because a winter bra made of merino sounds frankly excellent, if I can pull it off.

At some point I probably need to work out what to do with all the things I've sewn that don't quite fit so I don't wear them, or were never quite completed because they weren't going to fit... I do very little clothes shopping but I still have piles of surplus clothes, and in this case they're unlabelled and weird sizes and deeply unlikely to fit anyone else either. I've had periodic clear-outs, usually occasioned by moving country, but could probably do with finding a more positive / useful approach that I can use before it gets to that...

[fred_mouse]

Yay for sleeves that fit you!

I have definitely sat down at the sewing machine in recent weeks. Other than repairs, I can't actually think what I might have done (one was 'wait, offspring, turn your back to me... give me that skirt, I will Fix It NOW'). I have, however, ordered two zips so that I can fix a couple of foldable backpacks -- these have been great (I bought several, because they compress right down) except for the zips. I think this is numbers 2 and 3 requiring zip repairs, and I'm hoping I do a better job of these than the last zip I put in, because apparently not doing a zip for a decade meant I'd forgotten the exact method that worked for me.