New sleeves

As a refashioner, my favorite words to hear are, “I have a bag of clothes for you.” This is especially true if these words are spoken by my sister, who has great taste in clothes. She recently passed along several cute dresses, and I picked this one to work with first.

It is an H & M dress with pintucks, a belt, and pockets, all lovely details, and it fit very well. I just thought it needed a bit more contrast.

I had these lovely sleeves that I had removed from a gray, herringbone jacket I used on another project. I decided to add them to the dress. The sleeve edge was a bit larger than the sleeve-hole in the dress, so I gathered the top of the sleeve, like so.

I knew this would give me a nice puff at the top of the sleeve. I decided to leave the original dress sleeves intact, in case I ever wanted to remove the gray ones. I sewed the new sleeves on right at the seam between the existing sleeves and the dress. Here’s how it turned out.

I am very pleased with the contrast between the sleeves and the dress, in both the colors and textures of the fabrics. The herringbone also adds a menswear flair to the dress that I love.

Thanks for reading!

Amy