[singing the opening song]
Ba dom dom chika chika dom dom chika chika bleoeoeop!
Hello!
Welcome to another episode of Make Thrift Buy, the show where you guys send in suggestions
of clothing or accessories that you’ve seen online or on the high street, and then I do
my best to recreate them.
A bunch of you have been suggesting to make bell sleeve shirts and what with the 70s revival
that’s going on in fashion at the moment, they can be found everywhere.
However, I didn’t think this would be too difficult to make for ourselves, so lets give
it a go!
Now I showed you all how to make t-shirts back in episode #37 of Make Thrift Buy.
We are basically going to be following the exact same process as in that tutorial - the
construction of the shirt is basically exactly the same as the construction of the t-shirt
in that video - and the only thing that I'm really doing differently is altering the sleeves
to make them longer and bell-shaped.
So if you want to know how to make this top from start to finish, follow the tutorial
for making a t-shirt in Make Thrift Buy #37, and then come back here to see how to make
and attach the sleeves.
So the shirt that I’m going to use to copy my pattern from is this slightly oversized
red top – which I am now just realising looks stolen from Where’s Waldo closet.
Anyway I traced around the back and front of the bodice, and I traced it down onto pattern
paper this time so that I could reuse my pattern again and again.
Then, I traced around the sleeve, and this is where this tutorial is going to differ
a little from the other one.
I used a slightly different method of copying out the sleeves for the top.
The front and the back of the sleeve are actually slightly different shapes, because as you
will notice here, the front bodice piece and back bodice pieces are slightly different
– so the front and back of the sleeve actually need to differ a little bit to compensate
for this.
So first I folded the bottom part of the sleeve out of the way, because I wasn’t worried
about making the sleeve pattern long yet.
Then I traced around the sleeve, like this, and to trace out the armhole curve here, I
placed my finger on the seam that connects the sleeve to the bodice, and I basically
just folded the fabric back, making dashed marks where the two fabrics join up, which
I then connected with my pen.
Then I flipped the sleeve over like this, lining up the top of the sleeve with this
middle line there, and then I traced around the back of the sleeve in the same way.
All up, that gave me this.
Notice how the slope for the back of the sleeve is slighhhtly straighter and flatter than
the front?
Now the method I gave you for copying sleeves in THIS other tutorial, where the front and
the back are the same, is still valid – I’m just showing you another way to do this!
Both methods will give you perfectly fine sleeves for your t-shirt, but this method
is just “slightly” more correct, because it allows for the natural shape and movement
of the body.
Although, when you’re using stretchy t-shirt fabric, it doesn’t really matter – because
stretchy fabric is very forgiving.
So right now we’ve ended up with a pattern for a short t-shirt sleeve, but obviously,
we need to make it longer!
So, I placed this short-sleeve pattern piece on top of a much larger piece of paper, and
then I traced around this part of the sleeve.
Then I took one of my favourite long-sleeve shirts and I measured how long the sleeve
was on that.
I added a couple of inches, one for hemming allowance and another to make the sleeve just
a little bit longer.
All up that gave me a measurement that was 24 inches, so I drew a mark 24 inches away
from the very top part of the sleeve.
Now, to make a long sleeve all I need to do is to extend the arm 24 inches down from the
top of the sleeve, like this.
The length of this line here is just the circumference of my wrist, plus 1 inch, and these straight
lines here simply join up everything.
So that’s how you make a long sleeve, but to make bell sleeves, what I am going to do
is to make the end of the sleeves looks like… a bell!
So to make a bell, I made a mark 10 inches up from the end of the sleeve, on both sides
of the sleeve.
And then, I extended the sleeve out evenly on both sides like this.
I drew a curved line in this angle here to smooth out the sides of the sleeves, where
the bell begins.
I’m going to curve the end like this, so that the angle at each corner here is 90 degrees.
I just eyeballed this – if you wanted to do the specific maths to get this perfect
then you can – but it’s fine to just eyeball it.
For a more dramatic bell-sleeve, you would extend it even further, and for a more subtle
one, you would bring this in.
I also drew a little F and a B on the front and back parts of the sleeve pattern, so I
would remember which was which.
And that is my sleeve pattern done!
Next I cut out 2 sleeves from my fabric, using the new pattern, with the stretch of the fabric
running in THIS direction.
Then, after I sewed the front and the back of the bodice pieces together at the shoulders
like this, the next step is to attach the sleeves to the bodice.
I lined the sleeve up with the armhole like this, with the back of the sleeve matching
up with the back of the bodice, and the front of the sleeve matching with with the front
of the bodice.
And then, I sew the sleeve on in the exact same way as I did in Make Thrift Buy #37.
In fact, the remainder of the construction of the t-shirt is basically the exact same
as in Make Thrift Buy #37 – the only exception is that I used a different finishing for the
raw edges of the fabric at the ends of the sleeves.
I hemmed the end of the sleeves, which I did by first turning the shirt inside out, and
then folding the top of the sleeve down 1 inch, and then I sewed all the way around
the opening of the sleeve.
And that’s the shirt done!
So – how did I go?
[music plays]
I ended up making two shirts from stretchy, thrifted jersey fabric – this black one
was the first one that I made, but the material was… really sheer, it was really thin and
it was pretty weird to work with – it kinda twisted in this annoying way and it made the
seams look a little bit bunched up.
The second one is a thicker blue jersey, and this worked out a lot better – the seams
and the bells look really nice and smooth.
But I’m still going to wear both because I think the black one is definitely still
wearable, and I already love it!
And that’s it!
It's pretty easy to make, if you’re familiar with working with stretchy fabric, and if
not, I've got some tips in this video here to help you out!
And the finished product is really damn cute and also on trend.
I'm going to try making this with a more tightly-fitted t-shirt - I quite like the dropped-shoulder
version that I made here but I want to try it with a couple of different styles of shirt.
So anyway, the conclusion is! [scissor snipping sound effect]
Make this for yourself.
By the way, thank you SO MUCH if you are subscribed to my channel because I just hit the very
exciting, arbitrary milestone of 500,000 subscribers!
That’s half a million people!!
I can’t even comprehend how many people that is – that’s bigger than the population
of Malta!
Of Iceland!
I’m glad you guys seem to like what I do, because I really enjoy doing it too.
If you want to see me being a massive dork when the subscriber count ticked over to 500,000,
you can see that video on my instagram feed.
Anyway... arghh - thank you.
And I will see you all in my next video.
Bye!
Thank you to all of my supporters on Patreon for making these videos possible.
To become my Patreon supporter, go to patreon.com/annikavictoria!