Tuesday, March 7, 2017

Altering a Sleeveless bodice for a Sleeve


As promised here is the follow on tutorial on changing a sleeveless bodice to receive a set in sleeve.


Children's Corner Louise fits Princess quite well and is open to many adaptations. This one is a fairly easy alteration, even if pattern drafting scares you. I used the bodice of Children's Corner Virginia to alter my sleeveless bodice. I used Children's Corner Ruthie for the sleeve. For my mind, it seems counterintuitive to add to the bodice to add a sleeve but that is what you do. A sleeveless bodice is cut in on the armholes and can sometimes dip down at the neckline.


You can see the extra width of the CC Virginia pattern piece underneath the CC Louise pattern piece. (To answer the obvious question, yes on the Lolli-Hop Lane dress I did use a Children's Corner Ruthie sleeve, the reason I did not use the bodice of Ruthie for the inset sleeve alteration is because the Ruthie has a high yoke and it would have meant an extra step of taping, tracing the skirt to the bodice to get a complete armhole. Remember all Children's Corner patterns are interchangeable in their parts. So a Ruthie sleeve would fit a Virginia armhole.) So onto the instructions of how to do this.

  • Lay your sleeveless bodice pattern piece over your "sleeved" bodice piece. Matching center fronts. 
  • Decide at this point if you want a to leave the neckline dropped, I chose to leave it.
  • Trace a new pattern piece 



It is a tad difficult to see through the three layers, my stack has the Virginia bodice on the bottom, the Louise bodice in the middle of the stack, ending with the tracing paper on top of all. Transfers markings.


Note on your new pattern piece all pertinent information. Virginia armhole, Louise bodice with smocked insert, size and cutting directions.


Repeat the same process for the back bodices. It really is that simple.


Voila! My sleeveless dress has been altered to include a sleeve. Proceed with your normal construction.  I hope this helps those that had questions about how I altered the dress pattern for the article Lolli-Hop Lane in Classic Sewing Spring 2017

3 comments:

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