How to replace sleeves
I actually did this project back in the spring and forgot to turn it into a post!
So I had a Silver jean jacket that I loved, BUT … there was a bit of buyer’s remorse happening. I’d bought a medium because it was the only size they had left and I REALLY wanted the jacket, like, immediately. The sleeves felt a titch too short, but I convinced myself they were fine.
And then ended up rolling them up 99% of the time … which led to them getting all stretched out … le sigh.
So I decided to replace them!
I started by snipping them off at the shoulder seam …
Then I traced their shape onto the legs of an old pair of leggings (which I’d sewn and the waist was wonky).
Regular stretchy (knit) fabric is all you need, if you don’t have leggings to sacrifice for your own jean jacket. I made my new sleeves a bit longer than the originals AND I was going to add cuffs to make them even longer than what you see here …
Then I cut two new cuffs — two rectangles of fabric that were twice as long as I wanted my cuffs to be (since they’d be doubled back) and twice as wide as the ends of the sleeves.
I folded each cuff together, right sides touching, and sewed down the sides so I had two long skinny tubes of my stretchy fabric.
Then I turned the tubes half-way open so the “good” side of the fabric was covering the inside AND the outside of each cuff. (This is why you cut them twice as long as you really want them to be.)
The process of attaching the cuffs to the sleeves can be difficult to describe, so I took a tip from one of my favourite podcasts — The Very Serious Crafts Podcast — and made a little GIF to show you how to do it.
(Basically, you pull each cuff over the ends of the sleeves, sew around the top (stitching the two layers of the cuff to the single layer of the sleeve) and then pull the cuff down to where it should be. I love making my own cuffs because I usually make them extra-long. The kids want me to start putting “thumb-holes” in their cuffs, so that will be my next challenge.)
Attaching the new sleeves is much faster than messing with cuffs. I just turned my jacket inside out …
… I stuck my new sleeves in each sleeve-hole, pinned them in place with my Wonder Clips …
… stitched them in place with a stretch stitch, and then I was finished.
This is a terrible picture but I didn’t have any makeup on, soooo you get to look at my old phone case instead of my face. 😉
My new sleeves are SO NICE AND LONG and it’s a relief not to have to hike up saggy, too-short sleeves anymore. I started wearing my jean jacket much more often after I did this little fix, and I weirdly get way more compliments on it now that it has these crazy tribal-print sleeves.
So what did I do with my old too-short sleeves? They’re living a new life in my friend Jenn’s jean jacket! 😉 Her denim sleeves were too tight, so the stretchy grey sleeves are more comfortable. I supposed I could have called this post “A Tale of Two Jean Jackets”?
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Heather's Handmade Life 