Really Cool Sleeve

On my list of things that I must make for fall was a polka dot blouse. I was waiting until I could get to the city to buy fabric, but then while I was watching the kids at the pool and zoning out, I remembered that I had this polka dot print in my fabric closet! It came from a dress shop in London where they were selling some of their leftover fabrics. It is an ikat print, in grey and yellow, which is one of my current favorite color combinations.  It has some texture, too.   The fabric is screen printed, which is sooo much nicer than laser printed. Honestly, I just hate the color saturation, or lack therof, of laser printed fabric. I’m sure it will get better, but I certainly hope that screen printed fabrics will stay around until the laser printing process improves.

One negative about this fabric is that it is not an actual shirting cotton, so it is a little too soft for some of the shirting treatments.  I thought I was going to go insane trying to flat fell the seams, so I switched to French seams, and all was well.

Recently, I was looking through some books and I saw this great sleeve in Patterns of Fashion 2: Englishwomen’s Dresses and Their Construction C.1860-1940 by Janet Arnold.  Not to brag, but I have all four of the Patterns of Fashion books in my sewing library.  Anyway, I had seen this sleeve when I first bought the book,  but kind of forgot about it, and was reminded when I picked up the book again.  It was fairly easy to alter the pattern to add this detail, and I think it takes the whole blouse up a notch.

The pattern is from Burdastyle.  If anyone wants to know what the pattern is, leave a comment and I can look it up.  The sleeve on the original pattern is a normal shirt sleeve.  It has a convertible collar.  I have not sewn one of those for ages.

Sleeve. This photo came out a bit over-exposed. Oh, well.

Pattern for sleeve. You can see where I slashed and spread.

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