Guest Tutorial: Pleated Princess Sleeves

What a beautiful princess! We all know right away which princess she is, and not just because of the apple in her hands.  To me, a princess dress is all about the details.  I love the sleeves on this dress!  I remember when I was young I wondered why her sleeves looked like that. Well now I know -- it's because they're fabulous! And today we are all going to learn how to make them fabulous too.  

Today's guest tutorial comes to us from Aimee Walker of MommaMadeClothing. She put together this amazing princess birthday party for her daughter, and I have to say that her princess is one lucky little girl! (Not to mention her friends!) We have more photos of the party to share at the end of the post, but first let's get down to business with our pleated princess sleeve tutorial:   

First of all, we will be using the peasant sleeves from Marissa's Perfect Peasant Dress, but any peasant dress with a separate skirt portion (to make yellow) would work. 

Now we will do a little math to get the strips just right for the particular size of dress we are making. We will look at the sleeve measurement (length x width) from the pattern and subtract the seam allowance from both sides (width). Then we will divide that number by 4.  Now add the seam allowance back on. This is the width we want to cut for each of our four blue strips.

In our example, we are making a dress with sleeves the width of 15.75". Now we subtract the 3/8" seam allowance from each side, giving us a total of 15".  We will now divide that by 4, which gives us 3.75".  We need to add the 3/8" seam allowance back onto each side, and that gives us the total of 4.5" wide.  We will cut four strips of blue fabric 4.5" wide. Then we will cut three strips of red fabric, each 2" wide and the length of the other sleeve pieces.

We are now ready to sew our sleeve strips together, as shown in the picture above. 

Now we will find the center of each red section and mark it with a pin at the top and the bottom. 

At the top of the sleeve, we will take the edge of the blue section on the right and fold it over on top of the red so that it meets the center pin. 

Now repeat with the left side so that the two blue edges meet in the center. 

We will repeat the pinning steps at the bottom and top of each section until the sleeve looks just like the picture above. 

Now we will sew a basting stitch about 1" from the raw edges of the sleeve to hold the folds in place. Our special pleating technique is finished!

Now we will cut the armhole curves as written in the pattern and proceed with the rest of the dress steps as we always do.

And that's how it's done!  Your princess will be so pleased!  

You may have noticed in the very first picture I posted at the top that the dress also has cuffs on the sleeves. If you are interested in learning that technique as well, you can learn about adding princess cuffs here.  Whether or not you decide to add the cuffs to this dress today, your pleated sleeves are going to be perfect!  Each look is really sweet on its own. 

Now we can enjoy more pictures from the princess party! 

Thank you to Aimee for our guest tutorial today! If you enjoyed it, you can go show her some love at Momma Made Clothing and see more pictures of her dresses in our CKC Patterns Group. 

Let's Create! ~ Kristen

How To: Princess Cuff Sleeves

Wow I cant believe what a fun week its been so far here at CKC! By the looks of the boards in our Facebook group, the princess trend is booming at the of this summer. So I figured today was a perfect day to get this fun and easy Cuffed Sleeve Tutorial up. Also would be pretty cute for sleeves on back to school outfits. Okay lets get started!

Your going to complete your dress as normal but when it comes to finishing the raw edge of the sleeves you will want to follow these directions to give your dress a whimsical princess look!

Step 1: We are now going to gather the edge of our sleeves. Set the sewing machine on the longest stitch length possible. Sew 1/4" down from the top of the top tier Do not backstitch at the beginning or end. Some seamstresses prefer to have two rows of stitching in case a thread breaks, however, if you use good quality thread and gather slowly thread shouldn't break!
 

Step 2: Now we use the following math to determine the size to cut the cuff.

3"x width of sleeve minus 5

So for example if you are making a size 4 your sleeve width was 15.75.

So your cut cuff piece will be 3"x10.75"

Step 3: We will now take our cuff piece and fold and press in the edges by 1/4" an inch on both long sides.

Step 4: Take the cuff and fold it right sides together, sew up the short side so that we have a continuous loop.

Step 5: Next we will fold the cuff in half enclosing all raw edges like pictured below. Pin and Press in place.

Step 6: We will now take our freshly pressed cuff and open it to slide the sleeves raw edge into the opening. and then pin in place all around the cuff. As shown below.

Step 7: Now we will carefully sew around the upper edge of the cuff inclosing the ruffled sleeve in place. Thus creating the perfect princess sleeve.

See I told you all it was a quick and easy tutorial that adds a ton of whimsy.! And besides look how cute it is on! Happy sewing Y'all!

Morgan

You can also use this tutorial with long sleeves like our amazing tester Nikki from Ruffles and Cuddles did here for an under shirt.



Molly's Time to Shine

I've been so excited for a week or so now to start a weekly blog called "Wardrobe Wednesday" where I feature an outfit from Miss A's closet that was made using a CKC pattern. And when I heard that the Molly Faux Apron Peasant Dress was getting an updated version this week with more sizes, I knew just the outfit to share and I was over the moon excited because I knew that I could share some fun ways to jazz up your Molly. 

Personally Molly is one of my go to dresses, because I can whip up miss A one in an hour while she takes a nap. It really is the meaning behind "nap time sewing" 

So let me share a photo or two of the basic Molly that you can create using the CKC pattern and then we will move on to my jazzed up version and the tutorials that go with it. 

CKC Week in Review

Wow, last week was quite a whirlwind wasn't it??? Three new pattern releases plus a free shirred tutorial and pattern came out all in just a matter of a few days!!! Well, in case you missed it, here's our week in review.

Shannon released her long awaited and much sought after Willow's Wrap Jacket. This jacket is incredibly stylish and despite how cute it looks, it really isn't that hard to make. So versatile, depending on the fabric you use, it can be light weight, mid weight, or even a raincoat!