More sleeves! If you have checked my “Pin on sleeves” tutorial, you will find some likeness with this garment, but I wanted to some nice tips when doing these ones. First some inspiration:

I started by drafting the sleeves from the pin-on pattern; the same as I used for my golden sleeves below (laying under them, you can see my original sleeve pattern for comparison)

First, I have tried out two kinds of sleeves that are tied at the arms; my wedding dress and lately, my 15th century Italian silk dress. The difference between these two sleeves is that my wedding dress is just opened at the seam in the arm and then closes with strings, while my green/black sleeves are cut out to make the chemise even more visible. Also, the green sleeves are tied at the shoulders and therefore loose; I can change them for others at any time. The wedding dress is sewn together, the sleeves sewn after the sleeve tutorial I have on my blog.

Here you can see the wedding dress, the sleeves are quite straight, and the chemise is puffing out between the laces. When making these sleeves, you just sew a regular S-sleeve but leave it open above the elbow. Hem the edges, and make lacing holes and sew on laces on the edges. These ends with a pearl decorated cuff, but a regular sleeve will do fine.

The green sleeves look like this when cut out:

I started with my basic loose sleeve pattern in scrap fabric, pinned it on my arm and tried out where the gaps with chemise sleeves visible should be, then I cut away the excess fabric, and here you can see the result. The sleeves are in pure silk fabric, and I wanted to make them reversible to be able to choose between green or black ones for my dress. So I cut out two identical pieces of fabric for each arm, here you can see the black sides. Remember to make them mirrored, one for each arm.

I then pinned the fabrics together and marked out where the ties were going to be. Here you can see both layers of fabric.

I decided to sew them on the sewing machine since they are going to be turned inside out afterwards, so the seams would not be visible. But if you like; just follow the steps but sew them with runningstitches or backstitches instead.

To make it easier; sew the ribbons at the same time as you sew the sleeves together. I cut out the silk ribbons (40-50 cm each) and then pinned them by the seam allowance around the sleeves, on the inside between the two fabrics.

And sew around the sleeves. Leave an opening for turning them; I left the wrist open. Here you can see the silk ribbons in the seam allowance, just make sure they don’t slip away or get under a seam when sewing.

All done! Trim the edges by cutting away tips and seam allowances at the corners, turn the sleeves inside out and iron them flat. Since I want them to be reversible, I will make sure the two layers of silk fabric lays smooth and even edge to edge around the garment so the black won’t be visible when turning the green out, and vice versa.

Now it is time for some hand sewing; start by making lacing holes for the ribbons. I make them with a sharp awl, and whipstitch them with buttonhole silk thread.

After that, fold the fabric edges at the wrist to the inside of the sleeves, and sew that side closed with small whipstitches by the edges. If you use fake silk ribbons, you may burn the edges carefully to make them melt and not thread. If using pure silk, you will have to sew the edges or finish them in some kind of way. I folded mine twice and sewed them down with whip stitches and a thin silk thread (for sewing machines). This part took the most time on the sleeves, with the making of the sleeves on around two hours and the ribbon hemming around 2,5 hours. I failed to photograph this part, apparently, there was some movie time on the sofa instead. But this is what it looks like when done:

The silk ribbon has two lengths and these are pulled through the hole and then knotted. Either a simple knotted loop like this or a regular bow can be seen on art. At the shoulders, the sleeves are attached to the dress by similar holes and ribbons, three on each shoulder.

And finally, some good advice when making silk sleeves:

• Silk often needs to be lined to get that really good look, chose a thin fabric in silk, cotton or linen or a mix of these to get a historical lining which also works great.
• Silk is not a stretchy material, so make your silk sleeves a bit larger than your woollen ones.
• Try them on while working to be sure you get the look you want.
• Straight sleeves lay more flatly on your arm (white dress), while cut out sleeves gives more volume, pick the model that fits your project.