Autumn in London hack 2!
We love a pattern hack and one of our favourites is taking the bodice pieces of our Autumn in London dress pattern and turning them into a cute little blouse. We already have a blog which will take you through how to do this with step by step instructions and accompanying photos (see here), and whilst we also show you how to lengthen the sleeves in that blog post, in this blog post we are going to show you how to change the pleated sleeve for a gathered sleeve and it couldn't be easier.
Marking new notches
On your sleeve pattern piece, find the three notches at the sleeve head. Then make a mark 5cm below the first notch and 5cm after the third notch. These marks will become your new notches to indicate where you should start and stop your gather stitches.
Cut out the sleeves in your fabric and snip the edge of the fabric to mark all of the notches except the first and third notches indicating the original pleat which you should ignore (make sure you still make a snip to mark the centre notch at the sleeve head). Make the sleeve as usual until step 29.
Replace step 29 of the instructions with the following:
Change the stitch length to the longest stitch length on your machine and, starting at the first notch, sew a row of gather stitches 1cm from the raw edge around the sleeve head until you reach the third notch. Sew a second row of gather stitches close to the first (but no greater than 1.5cm from the raw edge) being careful to ensure the two rows do not overlap. Do not backstitch at the beginning or end and leave a tail of at least 10cm of loose thread. To gather, pull the loose threads from one end gently making sure the gathers are as even as possible across the gathered area.
Follow step 30.
Replace step 31 of the instructions with the following:
Turn the blouse wrong side out and the sleeves right side out. Insert each sleeve into the blouse matching the notch at the sleeve head with the shoulder seam of the blouse and the underarm seam of the sleeve with the side seam of the blouse (remember that the double notch indicates the back of the blouse which helps to ensure you insert the correct sleeve into the correct armhole). Pin in place and readjust the gathers as necessary until the sleeve fits the armhole. Sew together.
Follow step 32.
Congratulations. You now have another top Autumn in London ahead!
