Poofy-Puffy Sleeves

Puffed sleeves, ruffle-y sleeves, any sort of fun sleeves - these are a few of my favorite things.

Now, apparently 2017 was "the year of the sleeve", but 2017 was also the year of "I'm separated from my sewing machine". Thus, I did not have a chance to make anything with fun and trendy sleeves. So, now it's 2018, I'm reunited with my sewing machine, and I'm gonna sew myself some clothes with fun sleeves, just because I can, regardless of whether or not fancy sleeves are in style! (But if they would stay in style, that might be nice)

The dolman T-shirt pattern I made last winter seemed to be the perfect base for some fun sleeves, so I pulled a purple ribbed knit out of my fabric stash and got started.

I found about 2 yards of this eggplant purple knit at a thrift store, and, no surprise it came home with me. Then sat in my stash for about 6 weeks while I tried to figure out what I could make out of it.

2 yards was just enough fabric to cut out the front and back of the shirt from, along with two large-ish rectangles for the sleeve puffs. Once those things were cut out, I had enough scraps to cut the sleeve cuffs and neckband from, but I decided against doing that and pulled a scrap of gray knit from my stash instead to make contrasting sleeve and neck bands from.

Once the shirt was cut out it was quick and easy to sew, until I ran into an issue. The shoulder seams didn't want to behave. They began to stretch out and wanted to just keep stretching! That wasn't going to work, so I pulled out some gray hem lace to stabilize them with. For an extra fun detail I added the shoulder seam stabilizing lace tape on the outside of the shirt as it perfectly matched the gray neckband and cuffs.

After the shoulder issue was fixed, I sewed on the sleeve puffs and cuffs and shirt was done! (Yep, I didn't hem this shirt. The way this ribbed knit behaves, hemming the shirt could have ended in disaster. So, I decided to avoid that.)

 I put on the shirt immediately upon finishing it, and then freaked out and thought maybe I'd made the sleeve puffs too big. After wearing the shirt around for a few hours however, I decided that was not the case. The sleeve puffs are perfect, just what I wanted them to be!