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Sleeves Again

Last post on sleeves until I attach them to the dress! It's very exciting. (That might be the adrenaline talking. One week left and I'm not ready.)

The upper right corner of stacked fabrics on a light wood desk, with extremely sheer peach fabric peeping from the edge of green-gold silk, pinned along the vertical edge, and a strip of gold-embroidered brown along the top edg eof the green-gold fabric, with the right end flipped back and revealing the white lining of the embroidered piece.
I think I used nearly as many pins as I needed to attach the skirt trim.
Finishing the side seam of the lower sleeves involved a great many pins and a lot of fiddling to get everything square. I needed the embroidery to line up as closely as possible, all six layers of sleeve fabric to be caught in the seam, and for the seam to be straight. And for the base fabric and the trim to end up the same length in the end. No big deal.

Once again, both the inside and the outside of this seam needed to be presentable, so French seaming was immediately out, and after flat-felling the back seams, I didn't want to try to press six layers of squidgy fabric into submission again. A whipstitched seam, with all the layers turned to the inside of the sleeve, solved many problems—the extra layers of peach are just visible through the lining, but not visible enough to bother me. Whipstitching also creates a seam with very little bulk, perfect for the side seam of a sleeve that may need to bunch up cleanly (I do occasionally need my hands free, even when being ladylike).

A strip of gold-embroidered brown silk in a tiny wooden hoop, framing the two narrow diamond borders around an undulating oak-leaf vine, with a join in the strip just visible at the vertical center of the hoop. Swathes of green-gold and peach fabric flare from the embroidered strips at either side, and a long wooden bobbin with gleaming gold silk thread rests at upper left on the dark wood table.
I'm unspeakably proud of how neatly those panels aligned.
Not much to say about this step—it's the same as every other grafted trim piece. I suspect this is the sleeve I forgot to leave a few inches of trim loose on, so finishing the embroidery was a bit challenging. Huzzah for selvedges and the unspeakably tiny seam allowances they make possible! Otherwise I would have really struggled to get the base fabric out of the way of the hoop.

A close-up of a white hand pinching the intersection between two panels of fabric, sheer peach on the near side and green-gold on the far side, with pins anchoring the folded-in edges of all pieces.
Note how the pins are going in all directions. The blood sacrifice has been made and made over with this project.
Once the trim was grafted, I needed to finish turning and pinning the edges of the base fabrics, fiddling with the exact location of the fold until I had a perfectly smooth join between the base fabric pieces, and at the perfect length to match the final trim circumference.

A close-up of a needle inserted through the edges of sheer peach and green-gold silk, turned in and whipstitched together. The needle also happens to be inserted through a layer of the skin of the thumb it's skimming along, where a white hand is pinching the edges of the fabrics.
'Tis only a flesh wound.
I wrestled a bit with how I wanted to attach the lower and upper sleeves before settling on whipstitching the join—my other choices involved separating the lining and outer layers and inserting one piece into the other, and were going to be much more trouble than they were really worth. So I whipped around the whole upper edge of the lower sleeves, separating the sides to leave an opening that matched the size of the lower opening in the upper sleeve (confused yet? Maybe I should do that again with anatomical terminology: I whipped the seam from carpals to the proximal end of the radius, separating the sides to leave an opening matching the distal opening of the humeral casing...nope. Still bad).

Also, if you like to stitch with the needle pointing toward your supporting hand, you will eventually be impaled. These things happen.

A close-up of a white finger and thumb holding a pinned piece of sheer peach silk backed with green-gold silk. There's a small run in the peach silk just right of the pin.
The effect of removing about three stitches.
As I came to the flat-felled seam at the back of the lower sleeves, I realized I should have left the top half inch unstitched; as it was, I couldn't continue turning the edges in, and if I didn't, I'd have a sliver of peach showing through at the back of my elbow. Luckily I am well-versed in the fine art of Undoing What Has Already Been Done, so I picked out a bit of the felled seam.

A close-up of a white finger and thumb holding the pinned edges of sheer peach and green-gold silks, with their edges turned in. The peach silk is a little bubbled between the pins.
Those wrinkles will press right out.
Repinned, and kept whipstitching around. It's not perfectly smooth at that point, but far better than it started, and anyway the imperfect bits are hidden when I'm wearing the dress.

A close-up of a whit finger pushing a needle threaded with tan thread through the very edge of stacked sheer peach and green-gold fabrics, making a tiny running stitch seam.
Itty bitty stitches right on top of the other itty bitty stitches.
To tack down the trim, I used a very precisely matched stab stitch on the edges, blending the new seam into the existing seam holding the base fabrics together. At the proximal edge, I used a backstitch hidden in the chain stitch again, catching only the green layer of base fabric.

A yong white woman standing in an office building with a drop ceiling and mismatched metal bookshelves. Her long red hair is puller into a ponytail that falls over her right shoulder, and she's wearing a bright blue v-neck and a black skirt with sugar skulls scattered over it. Her arms are crooked in front of her, with long rectangular half-sleeves in green-gold silk with peach lining and gold-floral-embroidered bands at the hems.
Featuring my calaveras skirt and pre-tea face.
Not too shabby! Still only half a sleeve, though.

A close-up of a white finger and thumb gripping the triangular intersection between a whipstitched seam in sheer peach silk and the folded green-gold edge of another piece, with the needle inserted upward through the intersection. A fragment of gold chain stitch embroidery on brown silk shows in the background.
This little triangular join is probably the most densely stitched portion of the whole dress.
There was a bit of fiddling with pins and folding the upper sleeves until they both matched each other and fell to the proper location on my arms, and then I inserted them right-sides-facing into the openings I'd left in the lower sleeves.

Then more fiddling, to get the seams settled correctly.

And finally, another round of whipstitching! I love whipstitch. So fast, so sturdy, and (done carefully) so nearly invisible when done. I anchored the point where the lower sleeve seam and the connecting seam intersected very firmly; it's a point that's likely to take a lot of wear, so the extra security is worth a tiny bit of bulk.

A closeup of a whipstitched seam finish between a folded-under piece of green-gold silk and a piece of white linen, with the white-threaded needle inserted ready to take another stitch.
Guess what kind of stitch that is? Surprise, it's a whipstitch.
I'd folded quite a bit of extra fabric to the inside of the upper sleeves, so to anchor it and finish the raw edges I used the world's laziest whipstitch, tacking the folded edge to the linen lining to keep the finish invisible from the outside.

A yong white woman standing on a red porch with a white roof and plants in the background. Her red hair is pulled back, and she's wearing a dark red tank top and jeans. Her arms are crooked in front of her, with long pendant sleeves in green-gold silk with peach lining and gold-floral-embroidered bands at the hems and upper arms.
Suddenly my green sleeves are bronze. Maybe I'll write a song for this dress.
Ta-da! The reason there are so many depictions of people in this pose is that if you don't default to it, your hands vanish forever into the yards and yards of fabric crammed into your sleeves. At least, that's my story and I'm sticking to it. (Also, in winter, it is marvelously warm.)

A yong white woman standing on a red porch with a white roof and plants in the background. Her red hair is pulled back, and she's wearing a dark red tank top and jeans. Her left arm is crooked in front of her and her right arm lifted, obscured by the long pendant sleeve in green-gold silk with peach lining and gold-floral-embroidered bands at the hems and upper arms.
I should have brought props.
I am fairly certain I startled potential new neighbors getting these photos. It's good for them to know what they're getting into, moving in here. This photo also shows the open underarm, and the interesting effect the lining gives when light shines through the sleeves.

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