Not the I’m bragging, but I don’t see what the fuss is about sleeves. They’re pretty easy. My sleeves probably don’t look that good to anyone else, but I like them. They go together fine, no big stress, not like the strum und drang I hear from so many other costumers when it comes time to make and insert sleeves.
9 times out of 10, I scale up a sleeve diagram from Hunnisett. I’ve even scaled up sleeves from Arnold (the only thing I’ve successfully scaled from that crazy wack-a-doodle!). But Hunnisett’s sleeves just work, and they’re usually the right size too. Or close enough to it that I can make a couple mocks and get it right.
Then someone (probably Kendra) pointed me towards a great article in Threads (and its part 2) about pattern grading so I could scale up the diagram and then easily adjust the size and get the first mock to fit me with less trial and error. Another article from Threads about fitting sleeves helped refine the method. Yeah, they’re all for modern patterns but the tips work for any era that has, oh, arms.
I usually make one-piece sleeves, as opposed to the two-piece / top and bottom sleeves, which works well for 90% of what I’m doing. And when I’m making some fussy little style with crazy poufs and designs, well, that all sits on top of a one-piece sleeve anyway.
(This ramble brought to you by the fact that, yes, I finished up the sleeves for the 1580s/1610s doublet last night. Laced them in, they look spiffy. Now the thing needs a metric fuckton of trim to be truly done!)
