About sleeve alterations

When writing about my second coat muslin, I mentioned I wanted to alter the sleeves. More specifically, to set them lower into the bodice and adding ease to the arm to allow for a good range of movement.

Kimbersew asked for an explanation about that. 

It's actually a trick which is included in the better pattern making books (best known of which is probably Winifred Adrich's Metric Pattern Cutting). As usual, I won't be copying the instructions from the book. Largely because I don't want to infringe their copyright but also because every pattern making book I know of, applies this method (or one very much like it) to a few specific sleeves, while I think I could explain it a lot better in the context of altering sleeves in general. 

I going to illustrate this with pictures showing a normal set-in sleeve but it works just as well with (half)raglan sleeves or sleeves with a square bottom of the armscye.

Imagine your basic, fitted sleeve. It has a high armsye and a sleevehead shaped like this, which will include some ease (Note the markings on the sleeve pattern piece, the double mark in the back set-in marking).

In some garments, especially in coats, you may want a lower armscye to allow the garment to worn over other clothes.

If you alter the armscye just a little, a rather simple rule applies: Lower the edges of sleevehead by half the amount with which you lowered the armsye. Then, widen the sleevehead under the set-in marks for as far as needed to match this measurement on the bodice.

This method works well if you only need 1 or 2 cm of extra room under the arm. Any more and the sleeve will, at even the slightest movement, show strain in the area marked in grey. Nevertheless, it is always the first step when re-drafting a sleeve for a lowered armscye.

There are two ways to deal with this. The first, shown here on the right, is used a lot in sport(y) clothes. This method involves re-drafting the sleevehead making it wider and shallower (when doing this you can eliminate the ease in the sleevehead). This will put the sleeve in a different angle to the bodice (in the previous examples, the sleeve's natural position is hanging straight down, after this alteration, it's half-lifted. In sports, you usually use your arms in some way, hence the popularity of this sleeve in sportswear) and as a result, dramatically alter the over-all look.

For my coat, I didn't want the sporty look, so I used this method: Cut along one of the dotted lines at each side of the sleeve (so, either at the set-in marks or between it and the edge of the sleeve. Which is better depends on the original shape of the sleeve). Pivot the wedges upwards with the point on the sleevehead staying in place. Open the underarm seam up by about 4 to 6 cm. Re-draft the underarm seam and tweak the outside edges of the sleevehead if necessary (they shouldn't be pointing up).

I hope this makes sense to you. As ever, feel free to comment or email me with questions. Obviously any sleeve alteration you make should be tested out first in a muslin.

To answer a question

In her comment to my latest post, Barbara asked if I could explain how I did the swayback adjustment on those trousers. And well, that's not such a difficult question to answer...

Before I start, however, I need to come up with a little disclaimer: I have often complained about how the 'swayback adjustment' is the most over-exposed pattern alteration in the sewing blogosphere. In most cases, this was about bloggers adjusting dresses or coats on which they might have done well to check the pattern's waist length. And yet, I've gone and used this term myself.

So, to avoid any confusion, I'll explain what I think my alteration on trousers is: a flat-butt-adjustment. I like high-waisted trousers, which made this adjustment needed. With a lower rise, the only 'issue' you would have, would be that the back waistband would sit a bit higher on your body than the front. Which, with a lower rise is not such a bad thing...

To show you what I did and why I did it, I will have to show you some close-ups of my behind...

This is it in my new trousers.

And this in my side-buttoned ones.

The light wasn't great and the focus is a bit off, so I'll add a side view to display the problem: There's a horizontal fold just below the waistband. Even when I'm not wearing heels.

I started to be aware of this fitting issue a while ago, so I was determined to fix is for my next pair of trousers. To alter it, I simply pinned the excess fabric on the side-buttoned trousers (for this, you would have to make a muslin if you're dealing with a new-to-you commercial pattern), took them off, measured what I had pinned and substracted that amount from the top of my trouser sloper.

In my case, the excess was at center back and tapered to nothing at the side seam. If you have a similar problem, you can use this type of flat-butt-adjustment. If the excess also exists at the side seam and/or at the front, you are dealing with a pattern in which the waist-to-hip distance (vertically) is larger than yours, and you should take out some of the overall height.

And finally, to answer a question nobody asked: both these pairs of trousers have straight waistbands. In my personal experience, straight waistbands work well on high-waisted trousers, when placed from the natural waist upwards. That's what you see here. I would never use a straight waistband on trousers with a lower rise. The vast majority of women, myself included, has curves in the waist-to-hip-area. And curves are not served well with a straight piece of fabric.