Fine Heirloom Sewing, Smocking and Hand Embroidery

"Baby will be well and smiling in little garments made by Mother, Auntie, Grannie and loving friends!"

Please join me as I teach the old fashioned techniques and skills needed to sew baby clothes. You will find lessons that start at the very beginning and take you step by step as we sew little baby clothes together. May you find much joy and pleasure in making them.
It's easy and it's fun!!

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Sunday, September 4

Little Puff Sleeves on Baby Dress

I wanted to show you the sleeves on this sweet little baby dress from my last post.

The sleeves are puffed and they have a little cuff on them.  In this picture you see the cuff sewn to the bottom of the sleeve but it has not been turned up yet.  It is really just a band of fabric that will be turned up to form the cuff.

With the cuff turned up, the proportion of the sleeve is perfect.

Now, I want you to look at the gathers around the bottom of the sleeve. And also the top of the sleeve.  Do you see how the gathers are concentrated more toward the center of the sleeve?  There are no gathers close to the underarm seam.  This helps the sleeve to have that nice round, puffy look!

Here, you see the gathers at the top of the sleeve.
To achieve these tiny gathers, you don't want to use a longer stitch length than necessary to gather the sleeve.  On soft batiste, my stitch length will be between 2.5 and 3.5, depending on how sheer the fabric is.

And notice again how they do not continue down under the arm.

Cute, aren't they?

Babies and Toddlers look so sweet in  little puffed sleeves.
Blue Dotted Swiss fabric.
This is a puffed sleeve that I added a cuff to.  I also whipped gathered lace edging to the cuff.
It is a dress made from Emma's Smocked Baby Dresses pattern.









All Designs Are Copyright Protected copyright 2011 Jeannie Baumeister

4 comments:

Miss Holly said...

Oh...these are just beautiful.....I think I need a full day of sewing!!

Kellie said...

Love, love, love the blue dotted swiss!!!

Rebecca Nelson said...

Love the dotted swiss! My flower-girl dresses were of dotted swiss (in pink, of course).

All I need now is a tiny little girl to dress up! My Miss K is almost 9 and loves jeans and tees, now! :( Sometimes I steal her away tho and dress her up! :)

xoRebecca PS: LOVE THE DRESS AGAIN!

Sewconsult said...

I love little puffed sleeves...even more than a smocked sleeve. I never bought one of the puff sleeve iron, always out of stock when I tried. I had a small lamp with a low wattage for pressing those sweet baby sleeves.
Beckie in Brentwood, TN

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