Stitched Tunic: Session 5: Flat Sleeve Insertion

We're inserting our sleeve into our tunic. So first, we're gonna take our sleeve piece, we're going to baste at, I like to do a scant 5/8 and then a scant line toward the raw edge so that when we stitch at our 5/8" seam allowance, we're not gonna see any of those basting stitches on the right side. Even though it's easy enough to take out I just skip that. Like to skip that step if I can. So I've marked myself my stitching line on my sleeve cap, because I like to have a line to stitch on. So, we didn't stitch our sleeve seam or our side seam. So you might look at this and say how on earth is this going to go together? So we just take, just start with your center point, right sides together, raw edges aligned, start by matching our points. So the center, a center dot on our sleeve, we're gonna match with our shoulder seam. Then we're going to match, the next dots. Match the, well it would help if I had the right sleeve in the right arms I huh. So that's why it's important to match your notches. So we want our back notch, match with our back notch. Try that again. I've been sewing for 15 years and I still do things like that. Now, if you don't have, so we marked, our markings on the wrong side of the fabric. And since we're working on the right side to get this match, you just throw your pin right through the center of that, go right through the center of your sleeve marking to get those lined up. Match our notches, and then matching the ends. And you can see it's just it starts to kind of curve around, and look a little bit more like your arm whole seam. And with those thread traced markings, you just pull those threads out either after you've got it pinned, or after you stitch it. Sometimes your needle will go through those threads and you'll have to, and it'll be caught in there and you'll have to, clip them out, which is fine. All right, so we've got it all pinned, and then we can pull up on our threads, to ease this sleeve cap, into the arm hole. And if you take your time here, make sure everything is really, nice and even, it'll save you a lot of trouble down the road. So just kind of go, take your time, evenly distribute those gathers. And I'm gonna give you permission to use as many pins as you want. That's what they're for. Holding your fabric together. I like to do that half, and then pull up on this side to do the other half. So up near the, center of the cap is where you're gonna have your most of your gathers. And we do two lines of basting stitches. Just, it helps distribute the gathers evenly and also, when you're pulling if one of those threads breaks, you've got another one to fall back on. All right, that looks pretty good. I'll throw another pin in here. We're gonna go stitch. All right, so when we stitch, we're easing our sleeve cap in, get this all lined up. We'll go slow, nice and easy. You might wanna lower your stitching speed. I have a lead foot sometimes. We wanna go slow here. So you'll be able to tell already, so much easier to manipulate this under the fabric when we leave everything open. Minor adjustments along your curves. And as we get to our gathers, stop frequently, to manipulate your fabric. Make sure your raw edges are aligned, going a little faster. So as we go over these gathers, I like to just stop, I like to lift up the presser foot sometimes, smooth out that fabric. If there's anyway you can tell, you're probably gonna get a tuck, just kind of try and manipulate that with your finger under the presser foot. And if you do get a tuck, when we turn this out, if it's a big tuck, you might want to take that seam out for a couple of inches and redo it. Try and flatten out the fabric a little bit more. If it's a small tuck, you might be able to steam it out since we're using our cotton which is, pretty malleable or, you can leave it honestly. I don't mind small tucks in my sleeve cap sometimes. And as you're going over the shoulder seam, just make sure on the underneath that your seam allowance doesn't get folded up. Up at the center here is where we got most of our gathers, so go nice and slow. All right, we're getting out of the gathers. Now we're going to, press this seam, we're going to press our seam allowances. We definitely wanna use a pressing ham for this seam because it's a curved seam. So first let's open this up and see how we did. Yeah I've got a couple of tucks up there. I'm kind of glad that I did so I can show you that. They're really not bad though. So I'm gonna see if they'll steam out. So we're gonna go over to our iron, we got our ham here, and we're going to press, seam allowances toward the sleeve. Because when we put on our shirt that's where the seam allowances are gonna go anyway. So we're gonna press them that way. And once we're all done, pressing and trimming this seam, you're probably gonna wanna finish, your seam allowances. I mentioned that before. From the shoulder seam on, you wanna finish your seam allowances. It just holds everything together nicely, it prevents you from getting a thread tangle when you're washing and drying your shirt. And it just keeps everything together nicely, keeps your shirt looking nice on the inside. So you can, if you have a serger, definitely serge these seam allowances. It's so easy with the serger. You can do a straight stitch, on your seam allowances, and then use your pinking shears to pink the edges. Use a zigzag stitch on subsequent seams that are straight, you can fold under and stitch. That has the added benefit of looking really nice and finished and clean. So once we press those seam allowances we're going to go to the right side. And I like to press again from the right side if I have some tucks, see if I can steam those out a little bit. And if they don't steam out, if they're just little, I really don't mind a little tuck here and there in my sleeve cap. It gives a little character to your sleeve. Even, it can look like a design detail like you meant for it to be there. So, there's our sleeve all set in, and you're gonna do that with your other sleeve. And then we get to come back, and attach our pocket bags, to the shirt. Well, before we go to the pocket bags, let's talk about trimming our seam allowances. So, you don't have to do anything to the seam. It'll probably be fine, but I like to trim this seam allowance. If you only trim a little bit, trim your bodice seam allowance right here at this edge. Because when we stitch this seam, we're gonna have six layers of fabric we're going over and that's a lot. So if you only trim a little bit, trim this right here, just about halfway down, and that's the bodice seam allowance not the sleeve. So if you only do a little bit definitely do that but I like to trim, all the way up to my notch. And that just gets rid of a little bit of bulk in your underarm. And that's what a lot of commercial patterns will recommend that you do. So once that is trimmed, you would finish your seam allowances obviously, and then, we're moving on to our pocket bags. So we've got our pocket pieces here, gonna lay this out flat right side up. So we're gonna take our pocket bag, see, with right sides together, lay it on your shirt. And we've got these markings, on the wrong side here. You can transfer that to the right side to get that marking right. The angle of this mark is where we want our pocket to lie. Aligning the raw edges, here we go. And I'll do one over here as well. And when we stitch this upper edge, we're just going to use a scant 5/8" seam allowance so that when we stitch our side seam, a pocket can get tucked kind of. Just nicely tucked to the inside. All right, so we're gonna go and stitch these on. You're gonna make sure you back stitch really well at this upper edge, 'cause the upper edge of a pocket is, a stress point. If you're getting your hand in and out of your pocket all the time, we make sure that's strong. And then we're going to press this, so that our seam allowances go toward the pocket. So we're pressing that open like this. So you will do that, for all four of your pocket bags, and then we'll come back and stitch the side seam.