In my quest to buy few patterns this year, I have been working on my pattern-hacking skills. Most recently, I remade one of my favorite T-shirt patterns which is by Angela Wolf called the ruched tee. I blogged about it before in these posts here and here. After having done the RTW fast for 3 years total, I am far more inclined to make what I want than buy. But this time, I wanted to change up the sleeve a bit.
I wanted to give the sleeve a flutter look by fanning it out (I’ll show you the pattern piece in a bit). The yellow was my first attempt at doing this.
While I was happy with this one, I wanted more. So I reshaped the pattern piece again and this was the result I was looking for.
While the difference looks subtle, I got more of a full look with this one.
Bottom: pattern piece slashed and spread (yellow top)
For the blue top, I spread the slashed pieces out more and also lengthened the sleeve by 1-1/2″. Doing something like this is really easy. You just need to decide how dramatic you want the sleeve to look and spread accordingly. Cut to, but not though the top of the pattern so you can spread the pieces easily. Also make sure you have a piece of paper underneath the pattern because you’ll need to tape it down once you’ve gotten it the way you want.
That’s all there is to it. And the great thing about this is the top of the pattern stays the same so there shouldn’t be a need for additional adjustments to make the sleeve fit. This can be done on knits, like I have done, or on woven fabrics as well! Let me know if you give this technique a try. It’s an easy way to give a pattern a slightly different look.
