Reply To: Short Sleeves with interfacing.

[the_professors_assistantKeymaster]

Hello! Sorry to hear about your frustration with these sleeves, but don’t worry, because I’m here to help and we’ll get through this together. 😀 First, are you sure there’s interfacing on the sleeves? Unless this was some costume with elaborate sleeves, interfacing doesn’t seem necessary. The directions doesn’t show any interfacing and “facing” is different than interfacing. It looks like you have sleeve pieces and sleeve facing pieces (sleeve facing just means it’s like a sleeve lining). If you look at the actual sleeve pattern, does it actually say cut 2 out of interfacing? If so, that’s kinda weird. But let’s just go over the directions for now: Take each of your sleeve pieces, (outside sleeve fabric and facing sleeve) and you’re going to sew the underarm seams for each sleeve piece. Pair off the pieces so that you have a sleeve and a sleeve facing next to each other. Turn the sleeve facing wrong side out. Sleeve should still be right side out. Put the sleeve inside of the sleeve facing, so you have one fitting inside the other and they’re right sides together. You’re next going to sew the bottom hemline of the sleeve and sleeve facing together, just the hemline. Trim this seam after you finish. Start pulling the sleeves apart, but because they’re sewn at the hemline they won’t be able to come apart completely. Take your trimmed seam allowance and fold it towards the sleeve facing. Because you’re pulling your sleeves apart, this seam allowance should only be under the sleeve facing. Looking at the right side of the sleeve facing fabric, you’re going to stitch next to the hemline seam line, thereby permanently stitching that seam allowance to the sleeve facing section. Once this is done, flip the sleeve completely, so that the sleeve facing is inside the sleeve but now the wrong sides of the fabric are together. Then they just want you to baste the curvy sleeve cap section of the sleeve, so that the sleeve and sleeve facing stay together and then you just treat it like a regular sleeve. And if you’re reading this and going “ugh, I still don’t get it!”, I recommend just starting, because sometimes things make more sense if you start sewing and you can physically look at the piece instead of reading ahead and trying to understand everything before getting started. You can also take a look at the sleeve I did for this video which is kind of a similar process and maybe it might be helpful. http://youtu.be/gwWenYFLS18?t=1h17m53s Don’t give up and please post a pic when you finish your dress 🙂