Rhonda's Creative Life: Sleeves On Saturdays

The Gathered Keyhole Sleeve

I was in a boutique and I saw this sleeve on a blouse. If I am not mistaken, I think this sleeve might be in one of the drafting books from Japan. Regardless, I really liked the idea and I thought I would give it a try. A word to the wise, please make a muslin before you cut this sleeve out of your good fashion fabric. You may need to tweak the pattern a bit.

Begin with your basic sleeve pattern. Draw a grainline down the center of the sleeve.

Now the fun begins.
Draw a line connecting one armpit to the other, the bicep line.
Draw in another horizontal line 2" up from the bicep line.
Find the center of each side of the top portion of the sleeve cap and draw an angled line that crosses at the center of the sleeve.

Draw in the keyhole opening. A total of 2" from one side of the circle to the other is fine, a little larger will be okay too, just don't make the circle too large.

Please be sure to number each section or you will regret it later.

This is my actual sleeve draft.Cut down the center of the sleeve and cut out the circle. Then cut the sections apart as you see below.

Spread the sections apart. Try to retain the shape of the sleeve as you spread and also try to spread the sections as equally as possible.

I did not want too much of a gathered poof to my sleevecap, so I did not add to the height of the sleeve. Since I made my sleeve out of a knit fabric, this is okay, but if I make the sleeve out of a woven fabric I will add to the height of the sleeve cap so that the sleeve will have more of a poof and lay softer against the arm. Once the sections have been spread, connect them back together. You can see that at the top of my sleeve I drew in a second line that is a little more rounded. The sleeve would have been a little too flat had I followed the first line that I drew in.

Be sure to add your seam allowance. Please note that I changed my seam allowance around the inside of my circle to 1/4". Cut the sleeve out along the seam allowance lines and cut out the center of the circle.

To make the casing for the sleeve, I cut a 1" bias strip and sewed it to the sleeve keyhole with a 1/4" seam allowance. It was sewn to the back side of the sleeve and then flipped to the right side where I edged stitched it in place. I kept the ends at the bottom of the keyhole and turned back the raw edges before stitching. I plan to make a matching drawstring, but in the meantime, I just pulled a piece of rattail cord through the casing. Please note that when sewing the sleeve into the garment, you will need to gather the top of the sleeve head.