Sometimes things don't go as you planned. Like when your mum says she'd like to go to Asda for Mother's Day and you bump into your ex at the checkout with his new girl. Or when you plan a trip for your Brother's birthday but at 9am in the morning you get a call to say your dad has cracked his head on the fireplace and won't stop bleeding. Or when you spend the morning rehearsing in your head how you're going to give your number to the cutie in the park at lunchtime and then he's not even there. Or when you make the M8009 puff sleeves for your spooky playsuit but they just don't quite.... eugh.
So that left me with a pair of chiffon sleeves, fully gathered with no home to go to. With THAT Zou Bisou Bisou scene from Mad Men in my head (always), and style icons Laura-Mary Carter and Gizzi Erskine plumping up my Insta feed with 60s-inspired sexiness, I knew the sleeves were going to bring my next garment to life and fit perfectly on-brand with that style we've coined beretcore.
The Franken-pattern came in the form of the ever-versatile McCalls M7575 shirt. Tried and tested a billion times now, I know this shirt pattern fits me well and I can just about make it in my sleep. The black fabric was left over from the Maneskin-inspired Tuxedo blouse, a pattern which hacked the Burda 7136 with the Mia Blouse, which came free with an issue of Simply Sewing a few years back. It seems this fabric literally lends itself to frankenpatterns. With both of the patterns in my hack being McCalls, I thought there may also be some kind of dim hope that that sleeve notches would align, as if the designer had planned this duet all along.
With the 60s vibe in mind I wanted the shirt to be more floaty than fitted, so I decided to omit the darts in the front and back.
It's been a while since I sewed with chiffon........... I remember why now!! Yes, it still likes to wiggle around when you as much as touch it, trying to cut something out on the bias leads to some interesting shaped pattern pieces! BUT it does gather like and absolute dream, and I'm still a big fan of wearing sheer fabric (even tho I'm like 30+ years old now, what the hell), so it was well worth the perseverance. The sleeve bands were meant to be cut on the bias, there was no talk of interfacing them... Well I stitched my bias cut sleeve bands onto the ends of my rapidly fraying, gathered poofy sleeves, folded over and slip stitched the insides.... Oh my word, they looked terrible! The centre crease was the very definition of wibbly. I pressed and pressed and even did the second one in hopes of kidding myself it was all a figment of my imagination. Sleeve 2 was just as bad. I was in too deep now to just shelve the whole project, so I unpicked both bands and returned to trusty stability by re-cutting the cuff pieces from my black cotton. I took no chances this time, I was cutting on the straight grain and I was interfacing these bad boys!
The result is a slightly chunkier band at the cuff, but I think it does help the sleeves feel like they belong to the shirt, and they add a bit of weight to stop them billowing like billio.
My initial rejection of the sleeves on the playsuit was mainly down to not feeling like the fabrics worked well together. To try and further combat this I wanted to try and use the chiffon where I could on the rest of the shirt. I orignially planned to cut the button band and collar from the chiffon, but I had a few questions to myself:
1) Would the seam allowance inside be drastically visible?
I'm sure a quick Google search would have reminded me how to suitably interface chiffon (I feel like in the past I've just cut an extra piece of the same fabric and stitched it in???), but with sleeve wibble still blazing at the forefront of my mind, and enough fabric to cut a sensible button band, I decided to play it safe. As some kind of compromise I cut the top layer of my collar out of chiffon and hoped my seam allowances would blend into the inside.
I like the collar and I think I made the right choice. In hindsight, I could have really accentuated the Parisian 60s vibes by opting for a peterpan-style curve instead of classic collar points, but like I said, the M7575 is ever-versatile and I'm sure I will be returning to it when I'm ready to hack that collar.
How many times did I go on to insert and re-insert the sleeves? I don't know. With pattern notches and dots not really being too trustworthy anymore since mashing the two patterns together, and quite severe fraying going on by now, there was a bit of guesswork involved in figuring how gathered the sleeve heads should be and where the gathering should start and finish. I knew I would instantly reject anything that made my shoulders look massive so I did have to pace myself a bit to make sure I got it right. As with every single time I've inserted gathered sleeves, one sleeve looked undeniably better than the other! We've come this far though! So I restitched and restitched until I had what I felt was a symmetirical, poofy, but not too poofy, pair of gathered sleeves.
Perseverence was the key! I'm super glad I did, and glad I didn't 'make-do'. I feel like this shirt is a bit of a metaphor for how I decided I want to live my 2023. If it doesn't feel right then it isn't. Don't just put up with shit!
Psyched by the success of the sleeve hack, I was wearing this shirt around the house before I bought buttons. I liked all the style in its simplicity, so when I finally did get to the haberdashery, I opted for plain black buttons, and one blingy diamante at the collar as one final nod to Zoubi Zoubi Megan.
The Franken-pattern came in the form of the ever-versatile McCalls M7575 shirt. Tried and tested a billion times now, I know this shirt pattern fits me well and I can just about make it in my sleep. The black fabric was left over from the Maneskin-inspired Tuxedo blouse, a pattern which hacked the Burda 7136 with the Mia Blouse, which came free with an issue of Simply Sewing a few years back. It seems this fabric literally lends itself to frankenpatterns. With both of the patterns in my hack being McCalls, I thought there may also be some kind of dim hope that that sleeve notches would align, as if the designer had planned this duet all along.
It's been a while since I sewed with chiffon........... I remember why now!! Yes, it still likes to wiggle around when you as much as touch it, trying to cut something out on the bias leads to some interesting shaped pattern pieces! BUT it does gather like and absolute dream, and I'm still a big fan of wearing sheer fabric (even tho I'm like 30+ years old now, what the hell), so it was well worth the perseverance. The sleeve bands were meant to be cut on the bias, there was no talk of interfacing them... Well I stitched my bias cut sleeve bands onto the ends of my rapidly fraying, gathered poofy sleeves, folded over and slip stitched the insides.... Oh my word, they looked terrible! The centre crease was the very definition of wibbly. I pressed and pressed and even did the second one in hopes of kidding myself it was all a figment of my imagination. Sleeve 2 was just as bad. I was in too deep now to just shelve the whole project, so I unpicked both bands and returned to trusty stability by re-cutting the cuff pieces from my black cotton. I took no chances this time, I was cutting on the straight grain and I was interfacing these bad boys!
The result is a slightly chunkier band at the cuff, but I think it does help the sleeves feel like they belong to the shirt, and they add a bit of weight to stop them billowing like billio.
My initial rejection of the sleeves on the playsuit was mainly down to not feeling like the fabrics worked well together. To try and further combat this I wanted to try and use the chiffon where I could on the rest of the shirt. I orignially planned to cut the button band and collar from the chiffon, but I had a few questions to myself:
1) Would the seam allowance inside be drastically visible?
2) If I didn't interface the band, would the buttons/holes cause absolute chaos?
3) If I did interface the band, would you be able to see the interfacing and would it look shite?
3) If I did interface the band, would you be able to see the interfacing and would it look shite?
I'm sure a quick Google search would have reminded me how to suitably interface chiffon (I feel like in the past I've just cut an extra piece of the same fabric and stitched it in???), but with sleeve wibble still blazing at the forefront of my mind, and enough fabric to cut a sensible button band, I decided to play it safe. As some kind of compromise I cut the top layer of my collar out of chiffon and hoped my seam allowances would blend into the inside.
I like the collar and I think I made the right choice. In hindsight, I could have really accentuated the Parisian 60s vibes by opting for a peterpan-style curve instead of classic collar points, but like I said, the M7575 is ever-versatile and I'm sure I will be returning to it when I'm ready to hack that collar.
How many times did I go on to insert and re-insert the sleeves? I don't know. With pattern notches and dots not really being too trustworthy anymore since mashing the two patterns together, and quite severe fraying going on by now, there was a bit of guesswork involved in figuring how gathered the sleeve heads should be and where the gathering should start and finish. I knew I would instantly reject anything that made my shoulders look massive so I did have to pace myself a bit to make sure I got it right. As with every single time I've inserted gathered sleeves, one sleeve looked undeniably better than the other! We've come this far though! So I restitched and restitched until I had what I felt was a symmetirical, poofy, but not too poofy, pair of gathered sleeves.
Perseverence was the key! I'm super glad I did, and glad I didn't 'make-do'. I feel like this shirt is a bit of a metaphor for how I decided I want to live my 2023. If it doesn't feel right then it isn't. Don't just put up with shit!
Psyched by the success of the sleeve hack, I was wearing this shirt around the house before I bought buttons. I liked all the style in its simplicity, so when I finally did get to the haberdashery, I opted for plain black buttons, and one blingy diamante at the collar as one final nod to Zoubi Zoubi Megan.
Un, Deux, Trois, Quatre....
x
Location: Western Bank Library, Sheffield
Currently Listening to: Chaise Lounge, Wet Leg
x
Location: Western Bank Library, Sheffield
Currently Listening to: Chaise Lounge, Wet Leg