Sheona hacks: adding flutter sleeves

The next tutorial in the Sheona Hacks series is without a doubt in our top 3 favorites, super easy to do and gives a whole different look to the very simple Sheona top or dress. As you’ve probably guessed from the photos, in this tutorial we are adding flutter sleeves! You can do it to either the top version or the dress. The only thing we’ll change for this hack is the sleeve pattern piece.

*The beautiful photos for this hack were taken by the lovely Indu.*

Ready?

Here’s what you’ll need:

your Sheona top pattern

-a large piece of paper

-a straight ruler

-a pen or a pencil and a pair of scissors

-a sewing machine and/or overlocker and your basic sewing tools

First of all, trace off your sleeve pattern piece on a new piece of paper in order to not ruin your original. We are going to use a method called “slash and spread” to create the fluttered sleeve. You can choose whatever sleeve length you want. In our example we went for a sleeve length that is a bit shorter than the 3/4 length line on the pattern piece. It’s totally up to you, just remember that the longer the sleeve, the more fabric you’ll need so if you are restricted by the yardage you have, take that into account.

When you trace your sleeve, make sure you transfer all the relevant markings, eg. the grainline and all the notches. Also, draw your seam allowance, which for the Sheona is 1 cm (3/8″) and transfer the notches to that line. Then, we are going to remove the seam allowance so cut it off (don’t worry, we are going to add it back when we are done modifying the sleeve).

Now draw a line starting from the center notch on the sleeve head and going perpendicular to the grainline.

Then, draw two more vertical lines on each side of that central line, in equal distance with each other (what we recommend is to measure the distance from that central line to the side seam, divide it by 3 and that’s the distance between your split lines. In this example it was 4,5 cm. Do that for both sides).

Next, you are going to cut along those lines starting from the bottom and going upwards and leaving a tiny amount on the top to create hinges. These will hold the pieces together while you are going to spread them.

Take a larger piece of paper and place it underneath the sleeve piece. You are going to spread the pieces out as much as you want to, depending on how you want your flutter sleeve to be. In this case, we spread them 10 cm (4″) apart. To prevent them from moving around, you can glue them with scotch tape like we did.

Draw around the pieces to create your flutter sleeve pattern. Remove the original sleeve pieces and add 1 cm (3/8″) seam allowance to the sleeve head (shown in red color in the photo below). Make sure you also transfer all the notches. Cut around it and ta-dah! Your flutter sleeve is ready!

Now go ahead and cut all your pattern pieces as per the instructions booklet for your Sheona dress and top. You will cut 2 pieces for the flutter sleeves. The construction of the garment is exactly the same as you were making the “normal” sleeves (you will insert them in the flat as shown in the booklet, they just have a different shape but they are shown as usual).