Peggy Sagers: Rolling up your sleeves is the expression often stated to imply somebody getting to work.

But today you'll see that you can work and move without rolling up your sleeves at all.

In fact, I will teach you how to make sleeves that will look great and function properly.

Join us for sleeves and armholes today on "Fit 2 Stitch."

♪♪ ♪♪ male announcer: "Fit 2 Stitch" is made possible by Kai Scissors.

♪♪ announcer: Plano Sewing Center.

♪♪ announcer: Elliott Berman Textiles.

♪♪ announcer: Bennos Buttons.

♪♪ announcer: Imitation of Life.

♪♪ announcer: And Clutch Nails.

♪♪ Peggy: One of the most common questions I get about armholes and sleeves is that "the blouse fit perfect before I put on the sleeve, and now that I've put on the sleeve, I can't move."

Well, there's a few reasons for that.

And sometimes before we ask a question, we have to even know what we're dealing with.

So I wanna just cover all of this today, sleeves and armholes, so that we really can start to identify the problems.

My job today is to make this simple for you.

I'm gonna give you some information that you don't necessarily need to remember.

You just need to be aware of it, 'cause a lot of this is built into your pattern.

But you've got to understand what you're doing.

So the three basic kind of sleeves: we have the set-in.

Most of us know that.

Most of us--some of us avoid it because they just-- we just don't like the way they fit.

We don't like the way they limit our movement.

Then we have the kimono, and kimono just means it's all one.

And then we have the raglan, and the raglan is always identified by it has an angular seam that goes from the underarm and usually somewhere into the neckline area.

Now, remember again, we're gonna actually create each of these today, but you don't have to.

I'm gonna tell you what points you have to remember.

So, like any good base, if we don't have a good base sleeve, then the whole garment can collapse.

So that's why it's just so important to start with this base, start with a set-in.

So what's interesting when you think about it is we don't ever select a garment by our sleeve.

In fact, it's not even mentioned anywhere in the pattern.

We select a garment, typically, by our bust size and if the sleeve works, great, and if it doesn't, wow, it can be disaster and that's why we run into problems.

So what I want us to do is separate the size of the armhole and the sleeve from the bodice, and I'm gonna show you how we can just merge them and connect them.

So the first thing we do is we are aware of our bust circumference because, remember, we pick out our garment by our bust circumference.

Whatever that is, I need to be aware of it.

When I am fitting a garment that has no sleeves, sometimes I do what we call overfit.

We just bring it in too close to the body, so that there's no way you can add a sleeve.

So that number that we put on our body at our bust has to have some ease on a blouse built into it.

It's not this case on a T-shirt, but on a blouse we have to have some ease built into that number.

And so I'm always a big believer in going out and shopping, doesn't matter what it costs.

I go to high end and try on some blouses, try on those things, and then measure them, because our garments are going to tell us what we like, even when we can't tell us what we like.

Our garments will do it.

So we can go to our closets, we can go shopping and all of that, the goal is to just save us a lot of time.

So I've got now the garment that I like, and I'm--don't even have to measure the bust because I like it, and I've purchased--I've picked the size out by the bust.

But what I do wanna do right now is I wanna measure this sleeve.

This sleeve that I like, and that's when we're gonna go back to sizing.

Remember that the sizing doesn't necessarily go along with the bust.

There are so many of us out there who have arms that are just way smaller in proportion to our bust, or we have arms that are really--we have heavy upper arms and we need a bigger sleeve and armhole for that reason.

So I'm gonna measure this sleeve.

And this sleeve, when you measure right across the cap line--and this is called the cap line, it's the widest part of the sleeve--is measuring 14 inches.

What I'm gonna do with that number is I'm gonna add seam allowance into it, 'cause remember, this is without seam allowance.

So I'm gonna add 2 3/8 of seam allowance.

It's 3/8 and 3/4; if you do it slow, it's 3/4.

And so I'm looking for a sleeve that's 14 3/4.

So I'm gonna come to my pattern and I'm gonna start laying down the measurements.

This one measures 17.

I go to the next size.

This one's measuring 16 1/2.

You know, keep going.

Keep going until you get down to this size.

Bingo is measuring 14 3/4.

That's what I need.

And you have a lot of patterns.

It doesn't matter where you go to get this.

You're looking for a set-in sleeve and you're looking for that circumference that was on the sleeve you liked.

So then what I'm gonna do is this is going to become my favorite sleeve.

And so I'm just gonna go and cut this sleeve size out because this becomes the sleeves.

I don't ever have to go back and pick out a new sleeve.

So that's a pretty big statement.

So you recognize that when I'm going through this process of picking out my blouse, it's a process I should have a lot of patience with because, in the end, I'm gonna come up with a sleeve that works for me all the time.

And here's the beauty of this.

Let me get this cut and I'll show you something.

There's two other things.

That's the step one.

Step one is finding the circumference.

But let's, for example, just take the sleeve for a minute and let's say now that I'm going into this new blouse pattern.

And you understand that when I go into--from one pattern to another, it's terribly confusing, and--again, I never pick the garment by the blouse sleeve.

I can take this base that fits and I can lay it and you can see that none of those sleeves work for me.

They're all too big at the cap line, so that's really--it will avoid so many mistakes where you spend hours cutting and doing all this but we never check the fit until it's almost too late or almost done and that's why we have problems.

So we can identify whether that sleeve is going to be too small or too big or just not right.

If there's a little bit of difference, then we can then say, "Okay, what do I wanna do with that difference?"

But at least I need to be aware that that difference is going to be there in a size that I didn't even pick out.

I picked it out by the bust.

So, this is step number one.

We want to take and find a sleeve that we like, and you can do that by shopping, and I'm not gonna tell you it doesn't take some time.

It takes some patience.

Or you can go into your closet.

You wanna find the sleeve you like.

Then you're gonna use the sizing that comes in the pattern because, if you notice, the size that I just discovered I liked was a small.

So then what I'm going to do is I'm going to go to the armhole of that pattern, and I'm going to pick out the small because I know that that pattern, that that sleeve will sew into that armhole.

And I'm going to use my size small.

I'm just going to choose that size.

You don't have to see if it works.

You should trust the pattern, at least to that point, to know that that's going to work for you.

So let's pick this size and where I picked the small sleeve, I'm gonna pick the small armhole.

And there you have it.

I've cut out that small armhole.

So I can compare that this is the sleeve I want and this is the armhole I want.

So there's a couple exceptions because next what I'm gonna do, I'll tell you these exceptions, I'm actually gonna make a template.

I'm gonna make a pattern of this armhole.

And if you notice, I'm just going from point A to point B.

Point A is the shoulder, point B is the seam, the side seam.

And that's it.

I don't want the angles, I don't want any of that.

I just literally want this point to this point.

That's going to be my favorite armhole.

Now what you can see is when I go to any pattern out there, it doesn't matter what the bust size is, I can take this template and I can put it from shoulder seam to side seam and immediately what you can see on this particular pattern is the armhole is too low.

It's too--it's not right for the sleeve that I like.

So if I hadn't gone through this process and I went to this new pattern and I just looked at it, I'm not aware of what to look for, and when I look for it, I'm not aware of what I should be looking for.

So to make these two templates will greatly, greatly help you.

The relationship between the armhole and the sleeve, I'm gonna point out to you, but it's not critical.

But I have seen in plenty of questions that women ask me, why doesn't that work?

If I notice just the base, this is my sleeve, underneath it is my--I mean, my armhole.

Underneath it is my sleeve.

Notice, if I put those two together, to the notch, they're identical.

They're the same, and they fall on the French curve, they just fall gently right there.

Once* that French curve--and you can kind of see if I hold my hand underneath here that now they start to go different directions and you see this armhole starts to go up and the sleeve starts to come around.

And that's where the ease is all focused.

Notice that there is my French curve here, but on the sleeve it pivots and it comes up here.

So they're concave and convex of one another, and I'm sewing them together.

The reason I bring this all up is when you're sewing in a sleeve and an armhole, 5/8 of an inch seam allowance will hamper the connecting of those two pieces, so I'm gonna strongly encourage you to reduce that seam allowance.

The most I would do is 3/8.

As you get more skilled, you know, you can change it how you want.

But keep in mind if I thought about it and if this seam was 5/8, think how much smaller this would become, and if this was 3/8, think of how much larger--longer it would become.

So trying to get those two lines back together becomes harder and harder and harder.

All right, so that's the set-in.

Let's look at a kimono for a minute.

And I'm gonna show you how to make a kimono.

This isn't gonna apply anymore because I simply don't have a favorite sleeve and armhole when I do this.

I'm gonna make it with my favorite sleeve and armhole, but keep in mind that the difference being is that all I need is circumference.

So when you are doing a kimono, what I would look for is circumference.

So when I do a kimono, I fold my sleeve in half, my favorite sleeve.

What I do is I lap it at the top 'cause I take away the seam allowance and I just angle it to where I gap a little bit there at the bottom.

And then, if you notice, I just connect these two.

And that connection is all style, but what's important is, see, that circumference is still here.

And as long as the connection is below that circumference, then it will work.

So I can measure a kimono right through here to see if it will work.

But again, because it's styling in through here, remember that, gosh, you know, you can pick a size that works for you but the styling might just not work for you.

So you wanna separate those two things out when you're doing a kimono.

So let's go to a raglan.

Raglans are just kind of fun and, again, the reason I spent more time on the set-in sleeve is because that's the most difficult.

That's where the sleeve and armhole really have to be more comfortable for you and, without that circumference, I'm just gonna lose all my mobility.

And that's why when we do that muslin, a lot of times we do that muslin without a sleeve and then we get trapped in the fact that it doesn't fit, it doesn't work, it doesn't help us move.

All right, so here we're gonna do a raglan.

And what I know about a raglan is I do the same thing that I do with a kimono.

I do the lap here at the top and I do the gap here at the bottom.

There's something that's called an Armscye device and if you've not been in patterns, you're not gonna hear of this, and you don't see them and they're kind of hard.

But what that Armscye device does is it allows me to pivot this down and to know how much to cross these two points because right there is where that Armscye device comes in.

Then what happens is I take my French curve and I create a line that goes from the end of this Armscye device and it goes into the neckline.

And where it goes into the neckline is completely style.

Let's just take a minute and look at this raglan right here.

If you notice, this is the seam.

It goes underneath the arm and it comes right into the neckline.

Now, in this case the neckline's been cut away so it's a little lower neckline where this is higher.

But that comes right up into here and it gets cut away.

Now, the interesting thing is, is when you go to cut apart a raglan, this Armscye device becomes a part of both the sleeve and I'm gonna trace this for you where it would go.

This is where I would do the sleeve on the one part and I include the Armscye device into the sleeve.

It comes like this and it goes up.

But then when I cut away the bodice, it includes the Armscye device and goes here and goes down.

So that Armscye device actually becomes a part of both of them and you'd think when you'd overlap it you would lose it, but you don't, because it becomes a part of both.

Now, again, if you're interested in patterns, you can delve more into that but that's not really the goal today.

The goal is to make sure that this circumference, just like in that original set-in sleeve, is where you want it to be, that it's comfortable, and that you can have the circumference you want.

All right, so that's the base.

Let's now what we wanna do is we wanna kind of get into some fun stuff because, remember, there's only three kind of sleeves out there.

And if I go through and take the patience and get this base done, then I can go to town because I can look at variables.

And that's what I wanna do right now: I wanna look at variables.

So, we're gonna go to this first one and the first thing I wanna do is ask myself, is it raglan, is it kimono, or is it set-in?

That's all I need to know.

This one, in particular, is a set-in and then what you want to look for is what are the variables that I can take my base, instead of having to go to a new sleeve or a new pattern that we don't know that it works, and I can do it again.

So there's soft gathers through the top of this, and what we know about those soft gathers in ready-to-wear that that standard of fullness is always 1 1/2 to 1.

So we're gonna look at my favorite sleeve, and we're going to measure the cap line.

We know what that is.

And then the next measurement I'm gonna take is the cap seamline, and that's this right here.

And what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna cut and I'm gonna make four cuts, I think is a good general standard.

And those cuts have to go all the way to the bottom, and the cuts that are in the front of the sleeve have to stay in the front, at the hem, and the cuts that are in the back of the sleeve have to stay in the back at the hem.

I'm gonna go all the way to the bottom and, once I have that measurement, all I'm gonna do is split these open until they become 1 1/2.

So let's just say my number that I start with is 20, I'm gonna spread this open until it becomes 30 and that gives me 1, 20, half of that added in, and I want 30 inches across the top.

So we're gonna go down, and you're better off always to divide these into at least four cuts.

Otherwise, all of your gathers will be in one place.

So if you can always remember that where the cutting is, is where the gathers are.

And where the cuts go to, is where the gathers stop.

So I'm gonna spread this until it gets to be 30 across the top.

I redraw in the cap line and I'm good to go.

Notice that when you have a gathered sleeve at the top, you're always gonna have more fullness here because keep in mind that that fullness added through the circumference as well.

So a lot of times we like those gathered sleeves because they do give us more mobility.

Some of us don't like it because our arms are small already and they give us too much.

So always an advantage in starting with that base sleeve is that I know exactly where I'm starting with, and how much to add is up to me.

Notice in this sleeve there's a little horizontal here at the base, and I'm gonna do that little horizontal.

All we wanna do is measure how far down it is and then we're gonna come in here and we're gonna cut right through there.

We're gonna create a seam and we add seam allowance, we sew it back together.

And that's all I need to do to take my sleeve and create the sleeve that's there.

Keep in mind that when we dress, and we'll talk about dressing a little bit more later on-- whenever I create horizontal lines, not--they're cute close up, but they're not necessarily the best thing.

All right, this next one is a variation of our kimono.

And so when we see something like this and we like it, we can say, "Oh, goodness, I can do that."

And so what you wanna do and, again, there's gathers, so I can immediately know it's 1 1/2 to 1, and I can just measure what that is now, measure what my pattern is, and then I can go ahead and do the 1 1/2 to 1.

And let's look at how to do that.

Once I have this kimono, this is where I'm gonna cut.

And it doesn't matter if I cut to the bottom, it doesn't matter where my cuts go to, they're gonna taper to nothing anyway, and the natural fullness of that sleeve is going to add the fullness going through the body.

So any time I see fullness in a sleeve, I automatically know that--to expect a little more fuller garment, either in the sleeve or, in the case of a kimono, in the body itself.

All right, now I wanna show you this one 'cause I really like it.

If we look at this over here, we see that this is a kimono because, again, we see that that seam goes from under the arm and it goes into the neckline and, again, where it goes into the neckline is all styling; it doesn't make a difference.

But then these two pieces have been put together.

So once we create that, and then there's been a seam here, and then the rest of the sleeve starts.

So I think it's really fun to go in and create these sleeves and then play with them by looking at stuff that's out there in the stores and just kind of practicing and saying, "I can do that."

And I really believe we can save so much time by creating that base and then building on that base.

You know, the old expression, the house upon the sand and all that stuff, I think it's really true.

Okay, so now let's take a look at sewing them in.

I don't think I've ever gotten a question on how I sew a kimono because it's just so simple and we just don't struggle with it.

How I sew a raglan.

There's just--the ease factor is not there, it's actually built into the circumference, it's not built into the stitching.

But the difference is when I go to set in a sleeve itself.

And when I go to set in a sleeve, I have a little bit of problem there.

And I'm gonna kind of give you a couple suggestions and I've made this little blouse and we're gonna take the little sleeve and we've gonna set it in.

The first suggestion I've mentioned: keep your seam allowance narrower.

Keep your seam allowance down to, like, 3/8.

I don't know that--and I mean, I've been sewing in sleeves for a lot of years.

I don't think I could do it with a 5/8.

It's just too much opposition to try to put it together.

So if you'll just reduce the seam allowances down to 3/8 you'll go, "Oh, that's just amazing."

And then for whatever reason, a lot of your pattern instructions have the sleeve on the top and that's kind of working against you.

Your sleeve is gonna have a little bit of ease in it, it's gonna be a little bit bigger, so I wanna make sure it's on the bottom.

I think for a lot of us, we try to pin in a sleeve and I think that's a mistake we make also because we can't pin in ease.

It's impossible to pin ease in.

So I think we're much better off to actually just--what I do is I take the two sleeves and I fold them in half of their right sides together, and if you fold them in half, then you know where to put the pin.

And the pin for me indicates the center of the sleeve, and then, of course, the right side of the sleeve.

So I'm gonna take that and I'm gonna take my armhole.

The other thing I would suggest here is to sew it in with an--the side seam being open.

It's called the flat sleeve, installing or putting in the sleeve flat, and that's a really good place to be.

So I'm gonna put my sleeve on top, I'm going to flip it opposite so that I have the sleeve on the bottom, and I'm going to line this up.

You know, honestly, I really think that if you just practice a little bit, and just don't practice with expensive material, but just practice, you'll see that it goes in really easy.

So there's a couple things I'm doing.

The first thing I'm doing is I'm making sure that my edges stay absolutely together.

Remember that as they slip away, as they slip away, one line immediately starts to get longer and one line starts to get smaller.

So I really wanna make sure that my seams, as I'm sewing, stay together.

And that's paramount.

And that's why I say a lot of times when we are doing this, we pin it, and yet when we're working with the pins, somehow it changes.

So I'm coming up to the top of the sleeve and I can see that my seam is matching my pin, so I'm gonna take away my pin and I'm gonna continue to move forward.

I've already pressed that seam in the direction that it needs to go, so I know it's going to the back and I'm good to go.

And I'm gonna continue on.

Once I've hit that middle point and I know it's okay--if you haven't hit the middle point, you don't wanna keep going, sewing machine or serger, it's not gonna make a difference; be sure and take that out.

But I'm just gonna keep those edges right up on each other and just keep going.

So when you sew the sleeve in, and I'm gonna show this to you, you can see how beautiful that hangs.

I mean, it's just beautiful.

That seam, if you want, can go out and that's a personal preference.

It's not a pattern rule that tells you which way that should be.

It can go out into the sleeve and some people like that.

They just feel like it gives a little bit of kind of a sleeve head.

A blouse doesn't have a sleeve head so it doesn't make a difference.

But then what you want to do is you're gonna come along and you're gonna sew the underarm seam, remembering that no one is going to see if these seams match exactly, so it's just not gonna make a difference.

And I can go all the way to the bottom and, again, always just kind of look ahead and make sure things are aligning.

When I go to do armholes, and we've talked about this base armhole that I have, this base armhole is for a woven.

Look at that.

Isn't that beautiful?

And the beauty is, is I know that has enough circumference so I have the mobility I need.

I won't feel like I'm in a straitjacket.

It just makes such a difference.

Keep in mind that I want a base now for my woven, but I want to do the same thing for a knit, the sleeve for a knit can be smaller, and the jacket.

So I'll actually end up with, when I look at these templates, I'm gonna end up with actually the base knit, the base woven, and then the base jacket.

And those armholes will really make my job so much easier and I'll never again make a blouse that fits before I put the sleeves in and then has no value to me.

Today's polyester is a fabric most of us know little about.

It's a manmade fabric that it's very versatile and practical.

Sublimation printing is a technique of adding color and design to polyester that offers enormous creative opportunity.

All here, next time on "Fit 2 Stitch."

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ announcer: "Fit 2 Stitch" is made possible by Kai Scissors.

♪♪ announcer: Plano Sewing Center.

♪♪ announcer: Elliott Berman Textiles.

♪♪ announcer: Bennos Buttons.

♪♪ announcer: Imitation of Life.

♪♪ announcer: And Clutch Nails.

♪♪ announcer: To order a four-DVD set of "Fit 2 Stitch," series 11, please visit our website at fit2stitch.com.