Now, if you've got an underarm seam on your petal sleeve, each sleeve will be cut in two pieces.  The sleeve we're doing today doesn't have an underarm seam, (we can do that with petal sleeves) so we're working with one piece.  (One pattern piece, I mean.  Which we'll then use to cut a sleeve and a lining.  Don't get all confused on me.)

So, from the petal sleeve pattern, cut 1 of fabric, and 1 of lining:

This sleeve looks lopsided because we've put the overlap, the part that looks like petals, on the front of the arm instead of the top.  This way it'll be visible when you're looking at the sleeve from the front.  

Make sure you cut your two sleeves out as mirror images of each other, so that they look the same when they're finished, even though they go on opposite arms. 

Lining and sleeve right sides together, sew the hem:

Trim the seam, turn the lining to the wrong side, and press the hem, pulling the lining to the inside ever so slightly so that it doesn't show on the right side, thus:

Here it is from the right side.  

You'll notice that now the lining pokes out above the sleeve fabric.  Fine.  We could have solved this already by cutting the lining out using a separate pattern, with a little shave taken off at the hemline, but in my opinion, this is easier.  Just so you know it's not a problem with cutting, or drafting, or planning, or you, it's expected and we fix it on the fly.  Because we're versatile like that. 

Now we'll need to mark the underarm seam (so that we know how to place the sleeve in the armhole) and the overlap line.  We'll get those markings from the pattern.  The underarm seam is the set of pins on the right here, the overlap line on the left:

Match up the overlap lines on either side of the sleeve, making sure that the sleeve cap also lines up:

And baste along the top of the sleeve cap to hold those two sides together:

Now we'll treat the sleeve as one piece.  

If there's fullness in the top of the sleeve, add gathering threads to gather that up:

and now you're ready to set in your sleeve. 

Bravo!  Petal sleeves!

~E~

A bodice lining can be made in the same fabric as the dress, because it's easy to just cut another set of bodice pattern pieces from the fabric you've already got spread out, or they can be cut of another fabric.  If the fabric you're using for the garment you're making is heavy, or expensive, or hard to work with, or very thin, you might want to use a lining that compensates for those qualities.  You can see in the photos below that I've used "self-fabric" (the same fabric as the bodice) for some of these bodices, and a different fabric for others. 

The first step to lining a bodice is to sew the shoulder seams in the bodice itself, and then sew the shoulder seams in the lining. 

Here, then, is a bodice ready for joining up with its lining:

To this particular neckline, I've added piping.  If you're doing that, baste it along the neckline.  If not, disregard the piping in the following photos, because the process is the same. 

Here's the back, with the piping basted in place:

The bodice is right side out.  Now turn the lining wrong side out and slip it over the bodice.  Right sides of the bodice and lining are now facing each other.  Match up the shoulder seams, center fronts, center backs, and front neckline shape. Pin like a madperson.

Now stitch the bodice to the lining at the neckline. 

Okay, a few things here.  

-If you've put in piping, you'll need to sew close to that, probably using a zipper foot or something similar.  (I have used a pintuck foot to work with piping, with very good results.)  

-If you're working with a slippery fabric, or you're at all concerned about the layers shifting while you sew, begin at the center front and sew to the center back, then come back and do the other half of the neckline. 

-If you're using a button closure, you'll want to pivot at the back neckline edge and sew all the way down the back to the waistline, like this:

(I've added a strip of interfacing here, on both sides of center back, to help this quilting-weight cotton fabric take the stress of buttons and buttonholes.)

-If you're adding a zipper, however, you'll want to stop sewing the neckline at the center back, like this:

to allow you to put the zipper in. 

Now you'll need to clip the neckline's seam allowance.  Necklines with angles need to be clipped into the angles, not cutting through the seamline, thus:

And those with curves will need to be clipped like so:

Before turning right side out and pressing.  Don't, please, put the iron down where you've clipped and hit the steam button.  The fabric will collapse down into the little gap and look ugly.  Turn the steam off, if you can, and just use the edge of the iron to press the neckline seamline only, not the seam allowance.  Roll the lining slightly to the inside as you press, especially if it's a different color than the bodice.

If you're going to add sleeves, baste the lining to the bodice all the way around the armhole, on the seamline, to keep the layers from shifting while you do that: 

Now those layers will be treated as one when you set in the sleeve.

If you'll be treating the bodice and lining as one layer at the waist seam, baste all along the waist seam now.  

If you'll be using the lining to cover the waist seam, then leave the lining and bodice unbasted at the waist.  After sewing the bodice to the skirt at the waist, you'll then turn up the seam allowance of the lining and handstitch it to the waist seam.  The finished product will look like this:

Or you could use a slipstitch, instead of my whipstitch, for a less-obvious finish.  I do like finishing the bulky waist seam in this way, but I find that it's tough to get the bodice and lining to end up exactly the same shape somehow.  One or the other is always a hair tighter, leaving the looser layer to end up a little baggy looking.  So I do this:

I find that careful pinning and smoothing, making sure the seams match and everything's in place, and then folding up my seam allowance and hand stitching it to the waist seam makes the end product look much more professional, and I get to keep my covered waist seam.  

I do love a lined bodice.  Don't you?

~E~

Grading is just turning your scissors at an angle like this:

And cutting the seam allowance so that each layer of fabric ends up a different length, like this:

No thick block, and everybody's happy. 

~E~

A Peter Pan collar like this consists of two pieces, the upper collar (which we see) and the undercollar (which we don't, because it's on the bottom against the shoulders of the garment).  We want the undercollar to pull the upper collar slightly to the bottom, so that the undercollar doesn't show.  To achieve this, we'll trim 1/8" of fabric off all the way around the outside edge of the undercollar.    

In this example, the upper collar is pink fleece and the undercollar is gigham.  

First thing to do is get the undercollar and the collar sewn together at the outer edge. 

They're different shapes now, these two, so in order to fit them together, we'll pin them at the center back/outer edge, and sew from there around the curve to the neckline edge at the front.  While we're doing that, we're pulling and shaping the undercollar to the collar.  It'll do that, since most of the edge is on the bias there.  Then we'll go back to the center back and do the other side, shaping as we go.

When we've done that, we end up with this:

Now.  At this point, do not. DO NOT panic and grab your scissors and cut off the little bit of the collar that's peeking out at the neckline.  It's okay, we put it there.  Don't let's forget and take it off again. 

Grade that seam allowance. 

See how the fleece ends up being a different length on the top and the bottom?  Also, see how I'm not clipping the curves?  This weakens the seams, and never ends up looking like I want it to, so I just trim seam allowances on curves on the thin side and they usually don't complain. 

Then we'll turn it, and press the edge, rolling the undercollar slightly to the inside. 

Next, starting at the center back of the neckline, we'll baste the two necklines together, pulling the undercollar to fit the collar. 

Now, in order to see how our collar is going to look on this dress form,  (it's really just a display mannequin, I know, I know, but "dress form" is quicker to say than "display mannequin" every time, so we'll pretend, okay?)  we'll have to pin it first up like this:

"Like a pink vampire," my son says. Because this is a rolled collar, it goes upward from the garment neckline before "rolling" back down to the shoulders.  To visualize how it'll look finished, we have to do what it'll eventually do, which is why we pin it upward. 

Then, when we pull it down, we get this:

So cute!  And it lies good and flat at the front bottom edge, because of all that pulling we did with the undercollar. 

A closer look at the "roll" we were going for when we overlapped the pattern at the shoulder:

Very nice!

~E~

Behold the difference:

On the left here is a juliet sleeve without a sleeve header.  On the right is a sleeve with one.  Not a huge difference, but enough to make it worth doing, I think.  

What we'll use for this tutorial is a really stiff net called "petticoat net", but any sort of stiffish fabric you can get your hands on is good.  Net is extra good because it adds stiffness without adding bulk. 

Here is a piece of our petticoat net:

It's doubled over, and cut on a curve.  The folded edge is what will eventually end up sticking out, into the sleeve.

Now we'll fold the cut edge up into box pleats, just roughly, no precision here:

Pulling the cut edge straight as we go, and letting the folded edge (which was straight to begin with) curve around. 

The sleeve is already sewn into the armhole, and we're applying the header to the armhole seam here:

So that when we turn it outward, toward the sleeve, we get this:

Which should hold the sleeve up nicely.  Turn it all right side out and we'll get the puffed-up version that we saw in the first picture, up above there.  

~E~

Hm.  I don't like that rippling, roping thing.  If this were a cotton fabric, we might be able to press those ripples out, but this is a polyester, and it doesn't take ironing very well, so we'll have to resort to subterfuge.  Also known as a Very Narrow Hem.

There are, of course, other ways to solve this problem, a very narrow hem being only one, but a useful and easy one. 

First we're going to sew ourselves a guideline, a scant 1/4" from the bottom edge of the skirt we're working on. 

Then we're going to turn the hem up on that guideline and sew very close to the folded edge.  If you can move your sewing machine needle, a setting all the way to one side would do nicely.

Now we're going to trim as close to our stitching as we can:

And then, we're going to turn that tiny-baby hem up as we sew along the upper fold again. 

There.  What we end up with is a teeny tiny hem with very little distortion.

I like that much better, don't you?

~E~ 

All existential wondering aside, though, putting a sleeve into an armhole presents a unique kind of puzzle.  There are only really a couple of variables:  Is the sleeve gathered or not? Will the bodice side seam and sleeve underarm seam be sewn first or not?  After we know these things we can see our marching orders pretty clearly.

Adding gathering threads.

If the sleeve cap is larger than the armhole, we'll need to add gathering threads in order to take out that fullness.  

Here's a puffed sleeve with gathering threads along the cap edge (and the lower edge, because a puffed sleeve is gathered top and bottom.  We're not talking about those rows right now, though, so ignore them if you would, please):

You could also pleat the fullness out, in which case you'd baste the pleat in place and thenceforth treat the sleeve as though it had no fullness to worry about.  

Once we've got the fullness sorted out, we can insert the sleeve in one of two ways:

Setting in a sleeve "flat".

In this instance, "flat" means that we haven't sewn the underarm or side seam.  It's often easier to sew the sleeve in this way, because the seam is flat, instead of already sewn up into a circle.  Some of those circles (think a tiny sleeve for a preemie dress) can get very very small.   

Here is a lined cap sleeve.  (Its particular tutorial is here.) It's pinned into the armhole of the dress it belongs to to show you how to put the sleeve in flat.  

Here's what's important in setting in a sleeve flat:

1)  Right side of sleeve goes to right side of bodice. 

2)  Match the center of the sleeve cap to the shoulder seam. 

3)  Match the sleeve underarm seams to the bodice side seams as you see in the picture.

4)  Pull up gathering threads, if you've got 'em, to make the sleeve cap fit the armhole.  

Pin it all in place and sew along your seam, making sure that you don't catch a fold of the bodice fabric in the stitching.  It can be helpful, if this tends to be a problem for you (as it is for me, something about coming around the lower part of the armhole curve makes the fabric want to bunch up) to baste this seam first, so that you can go back and pick out just the stitches around the offending wrinkle, smooth it out, and sew it again.  

Setting in a sleeve "in the round".

This method is very similar, except that the bodice side seam and the sleeve underarm seam are sewn before the sleeve is set in.  There are times when each of these methods is appropriate.  Some folks say that sewing the sleeve in the round makes it prettier in the end, but I haven't done a side-by-side comparison and therefore wouldn't know. 

Here's what it looks like pinned into the armhole:

Again:

1)  Right side of sleeve goes to right side of bodice.  Turn the bodice wrong side out, and shove the right-side-out sleeve into the hole to accomplish this. 

2)  Match the center of the sleeve cap to the shoulder seam. 

3)  Match the sleeve underarm seam to the bodice side seam.

4)  Pull up gathering threads, if you've got 'em, to make the sleeve cap fit the armhole.  

Sew the seam, finish it, and enjoy your sleeve!  Don't forget to do it again for the other side or your garment might look a bit strange, though.  Hold off on your enjoying for just that long. 

~E~

When we come across one of those seams we don't want to stretch, such as the shoulder seam, or a waist seam, we can keep it from stretching by laying a piece of twill tape, ribbon, or elastic right along the seam as we sew.  Just sew right over it and it'll keep the seam honest.  

If you'd like to topstitch the seam after it's sewn and pressed, it'll make the seam more stable still:

Now you know who's boss, knits. 

~E~

There are two ways to bind knits (of which I know).  This one encloses the seam, but leaves the little raw edge of the binding visible on the wrong side.  I prefer this binding for clothes for very little babies, since any possibility of scratching tender baby skin with a mean bad seam is minimized.  

First we're going to cut a strip of the yellow fabric to use as that binding.  We want a 1" binding when it's finished.  This means we need a strip that's 2" wide plus one seam allowance.  You'll see why in a minute. 

Often, I find, instructions for knit bindings say something like, "Cut a strip of binding material that is 3/4 the length of the edge to be bound."  I narrow my eyes at this.  Have the instruction-writers ever sewn with my particular fabric?  They have not.  Too many times I've found myself struggling to bind an edge with a strip that's precisely 3/4 of that edge, but it won't...quite...make it...because my fabric has some odd percentage of stretch, say, 21% instead of 25. 

It is absolutely worth your time to make a test piece of binding to see how your fabric acts.  

All of this is to say, that I always cut my strip too long. I can always cut some off, but adding fabric is dicey business.  So I've cut a strip here that's roughly the same length as the edge to be bound. 

Because we do want the inside edge of the binding to be smaller than the edge that's sewn to the fruit fabric, we do want to stretch the binding as we sew.  If we just bound the edge with a strip that wasn't stretched, the binding would be all floppy-bunchy in weird places.  So, while we didn't want to cut the binding strip 3/4 the length of the neckline edge, we do want to mark it at 3/4 the length. 

So, we'll measure the distance from the bodice front point to the center back, divide that by 3/4, and mark that measurement on the binding. Likewise for the other half.

So here it is, all pin-marked up, (and labeled with lovely melon-colored words). 

Now we'll pin it to the neckline edge, matching those center back pins and the front point pins...

You will notice, I think, that the binding strip is smaller than the edge we're going to sew it to.  Good. 

Now, stretching the yellow (but not the white) as we sew, we'll carefully sew the binding to the neckline.

And it seems my fears were unfounded, because it fit perfectly:

So we'll just cut off that extra.  (This time it worked.  But just get comfortable and see if it works next time...)

After pressing that seam, we'll fold the long edge of the binding around to the back, so that it just covers the stitching on that side and pin it. 

See why we didn't need another seam allowance back there?  If this were a woven we'd need to finish or turn under that edge, but it ain't, so we don't.

Now, on the right side, we're going to topstitch close to the edge:

catching that binding in the back:

And here, after a little pressing (looks like it could use a little more) is the finished binding:

That's it.  Bound!

~E~

Another binding:

There are packages of iron-transfer dots that make spacing the stitches for making smocking pleats dead easy (google "Knott's Dots") and they look something like this:

Then you just sew down through the fabric on the first column of dots and up through the second column, in rows down the fabric. 

A faster way is to use a smocking pleater.  Which is what this funny looking thing is:

The pleater is a set of long gears that, when you turn the handle there on the right, do two things at once.  They fold the fabric into pleats, and force the pleats onto the sharp end of that row of needles that's sticking out there.  Doing essentially the same thing that you were doing with the rows of dots and a hand needle, but doing it more quickly. 

The "rule of thumb" for pleaters is, I think, that three times the finished width of fabric should pleat up to be the finished width.  But different fabrics act differently, and it's a good idea to pleat up a test piece to see if we like the results before we go to the trouble to pleat the real garment piece.  

So we'll start with a piece of fabric 9" long.

We'll thread up the pleater, run that through, and pull the threads up to make it 3" long. 

Hm.

Let's try a piece 12" long.  Then, if we pull it down to 3" wide it'll be a 4:1 ratio.

Yes, I like that much better.  

Here they are compared, the 4:1 on top and the 3:1 on bottom:

Here it is, threaded up, doing its thing to the top of the skirt in the same white fabric:

And here it is, all finished:

Ready, in just a few seconds, to be smocked, slowly, by hand, over the next few days.  You have to pick your hand-sewing battles, I say. 

~E~