A sleeve that will do, mostly

As I think we all know by now, I love novelty prints.

And I wear them all summer long.

And I didn't buy any of these. Shocking I'd pass on Rocko.

In the winter, I wear a down vest. I'm working from home, and it gets cold and expensive.

Yes, I wear other things I sew in ridiculous prints, like jeans. 

They are still shrinking. I'm not getting taller.

But not many woven tops.

Vogue 1257

Most of the woven tops I like are Issey Miyake patterns, or variations on that ideal.

I think Miyake's 80s sleeves tend to be slightly mis-drafted: there's a slight curve to the cap, while the top of the armscye is flat, and you get that bulge on the dropped sleeve head. I've been drafting them out of the patterns; this is from an Ebay photo of a Miyake Plantation line linen shirt. The bulge was always part of the design it seems. Which is weird; it's not a case of removing shoulder pads from a too-wide 80s shirt, but a shirt with dropped shoulders that has a vestigial rounded cap sleeve pattern piece.

The Miyake sleeves are just too wide to fit into a down vest armhole. 

Long story slightly shorter: I wanted a woven long sleeved shirt, to keep the tasteless vibe going all year long.

The body part is easy. I'm flat-chested but broad in front.
 My back is rounding, but not too badly.

The sleeve part is the tricksy part.

Bad shoulder, wider upper arms than previous patterns I've drafted/edited, and a desire  to be able to move and reach things: these have compounded my errors.

What I kept coming back to was this article about flamenco sleeves. I am pretty sure I read about this on the Curvy Sewing Facebook page, and I thank that person, whoever they were. It's a great explanation and clearly diagrammed.

Flamenco sleeves by Flamenco Dressmaking.com

Between that and Overflowing Stash's conversation with Kenneth King

I felt I was onto something

Kinda like that sleeve at the top left.  From Butterick 4238.

I had picked this up to make a Bryn Walker knock off shirt for my sister, from some of the miles of IKEA curtain linen I've hoarded kept for her. I made one for myself and was impressed at how it fit right out of the box, with little/no ease on the sleeve. In a pullover, no less. High fives all around!

First version: not bad. It needs to be a little wider at the bicep, and it pulls up in the center. Also just noticing that the sleeve needs to rotate back a little bit. Note made!

Very wearable top, I should mention. The front flap is just for grins, but it's pretty and I crammed this into a 54" wide yard of fabric (without nap) at size 14.

No buttonholes!

It features a wider, flatter sleeve cap, and a deeper curve at the base of the armsceye. There is minimal ease in the seam, no gathers.

The deeper armsceye gives me some room for the extra width of the sleeve. 

Armed with my new ideal sleeve, I draft a new pattern.

You know the drill. You draw a seam. You match the seam with its reciprocal seam. That's off. You go back the other way, sleeve to hole, hole to sleeve. 

I am removing the year it took me to get here.

Blogging is time travel.

The green line is the back piece, the lower layer red line is the front. Slightly deeper in the front, but essentially the same. 

Another way of talking about this is with a pattern that you could look at yourself

Like the Collette Sorbetto pattern, which is updated to their new block and is free on their website.

It's a standard bodice, comes with a sleeved variation. The pullover ease comes from the pleat in the front. The sleeve has gathers at the top. This covers a multitude of wide bicep sins, and is worth thinking about.

I mean, I'm spending a LONG time just trying to get rid of those gathers.

They don't look much alike because - tiny problem - I don't have a bust so I don't need a dart. Certainly not one for a B cup like that one. And that dart moves the armsceye enough to confuse the shape issue.

(There is a link, to the right, on this very page about a SBA, from Trumbelina Sews, and it's well worth taking a look at if this is an issue for you. She also addresses a broad back adjustment)

Nevertheless, there are some clearly illustrative changes. I have cut the Colette to my size and it lines up with my measurements and ease allowance.

Lining the front pieces up on the center line, my front bodice piece has a closer-in shoulder (I want that seam at the top of my shoulder for maximum mobility) and about the same armscye measurement.

(I know the shoulder slope is off. Oh and moving the shoulder seam up the shoulder would mess something else up)

(there's a lesson here in the conservation of mass)

Or

Agents of Shield makes a plot point of it

 The fabric has to go somewhere. You pull something here, it comes from where? 

Wrinkles point to the problem.

See, it's pulling up in the center of the sleeve!  Wrinkles trying to tell me something! What is it, little wrinkle?
Did I listen? No.

The greatest difference is in the sleeve: it's the same width, just flattened out and wider in the bicep area. I've also removed most of the ease from the seam (okay I have no gathers at the top of mine).

It is a little shorter in the seam than the Colette sleeve, but it has roughly the same seam length as the Colette.

The rest is trial and error. And sewing.

This where all the effort pays off and unravels, about the same time. 

I've gone too wide in the sleeve, and need to increase the height of the cap (still pulling at the center sleeve). I missed that entirely until writing this and staring at the photos.

D'oh.

In addition, I've continued the error of the shoulder angle, so that the top wants to fall to one side or the other. Since so much of this shirt is about the shoulder line, this is a big enough error to make me want to pick that all apart (bias binding included -KKEERRAP) and fix it.

Eh, let's make another one.

Introducing version four: the Frida

I have added 1/2" of height in the cap. Also reduced shoulder slope

Smoothing out the transition in the new sleeve cap

And lookit that! I did not change the armsceye, just paid more attention to getting the sleeve to fit at the top. Woven fabric will ease in without too much distortion.

I know, busy print, hard to read details: the sleeve is not pulling up as much. I brought in the width of the sleeve below the bicep an inch as well

Yes, I am wearing the Frida jeans. They are very very wrinkled; I am a trifle too big for them now. This is why you aren't seeing more of them in this photo. This is my blog, dammit

I am a lot closer than I was, however. I should add a slight bust dart. I am good with the slight bag at the back sleeves. Style wise this pattern needs something else going on to avoid Nurse Scrub Shirt-itis. 

My goal is to make a shirt I can move my arms in.

And that I can make out of this:

The only thing that makes me hesitate is that it's rather scratchy in texture. Maybe it needs to be culottes. I mean, it is sort of butt-centric themed.

Maybe they still have that Rocko fabric up at the Joann's super store?

I should go check.

The elephants in the room / Missing my Upper Arms

I haven't been thin in  twenty years, but I had shoulders, even in this grainy photo 

I am missing my arms.

I discovered lifting weights when I started going to the gym twenty years ago. I'm no competitive weight lifter (although I lift with a couple) and I have enough congenital deficiencies to prevent me from a lot of activities. The hip/replacement hip never liked running or biking. It's hard to find a real yoga teacher (mine died).  But I have never stopped trying.

Nevertheless, weight lifting is fun. You can improve so incrementally, it's relatively easy to make any progress. Adding a pound a week is 52 pounds more after a year.

Or less, if weight loss was where this was going. But it's not about numbers; it's about feeling better.

In a fit of home improvement, I ruined my right shoulder a year and a half ago. Don't move trees by yourself. And either tore or injured something, beyond just the frozen shoulder I developed.

I've had frozen shoulder in my left shoulder, I know how this works. And this is different.

The problem for me is that I have lost all the progress I made over twenty years, and now have those big flappy 'lady arms'.

And why am I calling them that? And why do you know what I mean when I say that? That alone makes me mad. 

 I have been having trouble redrafting sleeves/bodices over my flappy arms, partly from "I will be able to get them back in shape quickly enough to avoid dealing with this set of alterations" to "I'll just wear sleeveless shirts and cardigans"

You know me: I have no difficulty with talking about fitting jeans over my sizable butt.

That's no sway back kids. It's a pinochle table!

My arms make me sad. I could bench my own weight. Now I can barely lift 25.

Which is better than the 20 of a month ago.

Or the 0 of the last year.

So we're going to spend some time talking about sleeves and sleeveheads.
I had to widen my sleeves but I didn't want to add shoulder pads that I'd have to remove.

Bigger sleeve needs some structure; sleeve heads.

Adding a sleevehead (a tube of rolled fleece in this case) provided some needed definition to this jacket's shoulders. And using a cool stripey bit to add to the collection of interior colors makes me happy.

eh. Miyake 1664 gets the job done.

And there's the nifty button set to jolly up a severe style

Just a slice of fleece please (doubled and graded)

The encased fleece rides on the top of the armscye on the seam.

Then I finished the sleeve seam with a bias trim from the lining, The inside of this is so much prettier than the outside; the blue print is silky faille from Spoonflower from Edsel 2084

I'm cleaning house right now.

Or decluttering the hoard, or pruning the stash.

I'm putting in the earplugs and cranking up the shop vac; serious vacuuming in five.