From Long Sleeve Sweater to Short Sleeve Update

Today I want to show you one of my favorite things to do currently: altering sleeve length.It's become one of my favorite things due to the fact that I have had to change a lot of sleeves in my short career as a seamstress and it's such a quick thing to change but it can make all the difference between a shirt looking dated or having current fashion trends.

This sweater came to me from my sweet sister-in-law again. When I saw it I instantly loved it. It is made from really soft yarn and I love little girls in soft sweaters. It makes you want to hug them just so you can squish their soft bodies and sweaters against your own face! :)

 It originally had a hood and even though I liked the hood, I wanted to try something I had never done before and I thought it would be a cute update, so I chopped off the hood. And turned the remaining fabric over and stitched it to become a cute little collar. I love it and you can see the new collar below.

        
                   If you have little kids, I'm sure your sweaters have plenty of holes too.
                  Kids and holes in clothing just go together. Just so you know, this
                sweater came with its hole. I knew when I got this sweater that it would
                      need a little adjustment.
                I started off by cutting off the ribbing on the ends of the sleeves so that
                        I could add them back onto my shorter sleeves.

             First things first, I'm going to cut my sleeve as close to the hole as I can so I can have as
                                 much sleeve to play with as possible.

                        Take your leftover sleeve from the first cut and match it up to the remaining sleeve,
                         that way both sleeves are even.

                              Just so you know my process, I can usually see what I want my final product to

                      look like before I get started on it. That gives me a goal to work towards. So                       after trying and playing with that straight sleeve, I decided that to get the look I wanted, I would need to cut my sleeve shorter and at an angle. So, that's what I did. I cut               my first sleeve, took the scrap I just cut off and matched it to the other side so I would cut the same amount and make the sleeves match.  I knew I wanted to do a gathering stitch, 

so I decided where I wanted the stitch to start and where I wanted it to stop. I put pins

in those places and sewed my sweater right up with that stitch. 

(A gathering stitch is just the longest stitch on your machine. Make sure when you start 

you have your thread pulled a little long and when you finish you cut your threads a little long 

so that you have lots of extra thread to do the next step.)

  

                     Pull whatever thread you need to to make the fabric pucker all up, creating the above
                      look on your garment.  Sweaters are a little tricky to gather and then sew up because
                     of the bulk that is created by all that gathering. I had to hang on pretty tight to my
                    gathering thread while sewing it up so that the pressure of the needle didn't push all
                    the gathering down.  Once you've sewn your gathering in place with a shorter stitch
                    on your machine, you're ready to sew the ribbing back into place at the end of your
                   sleeve. Make sure you have the cut end being sewn onto the sleeve and not the
                   finished end. You can thank me later for that reminder.  :)

                             Here you have it! Your cute new "just-poofy-enough" sleeve!