Sleeve Alterations

Still out here doing everything I can in the crusade against fast fashion. You may recall my friend, Maggie, from her fiber arts meme endeavor. Maggie reached out to me last week, because found a shirt that she really liked except for some rather unflattering sleeves. She offered to buy me dinner for me to fix it (my favorite kind of trade).

When I saw it on Maggie, I agreed. There was really too much fabric in the sleeves, enough to be unflattering on just about anyone. The great thing about too much fabric, though? It’s pretty easy to just take some away.

Now, if I were a really cool tailor, I would have taken out the the sleeves, cut off some excess, and resewed the seams on without the ruffles. However, I’ve always had a “work smarter, not harder” approach and decided, instead, just to cut some off the top where all this extra fabric was hanging out. I laid it out flat, best as I could with the ruffles, and found a reasonable place across the top to seam it. I aimed for a silhouette closer to a standard t-shirt.

This took some fudging to sew with the ruffles, but two inches in, it was a super straight-forward seam. Once those two were finished, I just took pinking shears to the remaining fabric.

Maggie loves the fix! And I’m so grateful I didn’t spend a whole weekend working on it just to avoid a seam at the top. Most importantly, it’s now one more shirt that will be lovingly worn instead of going to the landfill. The fight continues!