short sleeve summer
Look at this thing. I used a blind stitch! No seam! And get a load of the little buttons below!
There’s a heat wave hitting Frisco and Hell’s Angels already know what to do – cut the sleeves off your jacket. 95 degrees tomorrow people, and I’m business professional. Watch me now, I got short sleeves on this wool thang.
This took less than two hours. I even cooked Annie’s mac & cheese while doing it.
TIPS FROM A PRO:
Cut the jacket two inches longer than your final length so you can turn it back and sew it like it was before.
SOMETHING TO NOTE:
Long sleeve suit coats allow the long sleeve shirt to poke out, but short sleeve shirts don’t have buttons and a snug fit. Mine was all bunchy and looked weird hanging out so unless you peg your shirt cuffs, leave the jacket sleeve longer than the shirt sleeve. Adds to the weirdness, too.
FYI
I’m lookin’ good.
Here’s the problem: in the old days of the 1950′s dudes were shorter. Cigarettes grew closer to the ground on the cigarette trees. By 2008 the lack of low dangling cigarettes resulted in an evolutionary adaption of increased arm length. Now all those cool thrift store sport coats are useless…until now.
My only complaint is that in this picture it looks like my arm was photoshopped and comes out of my body a few inches below normal. Stand by for my roommate to come home and take a better picture. I even knocked on the neighbors door. No answer.
That seam looks damn good.
Lucky for me I got old school short arms. I think I’ll hit the thrift store this weekend and see what they got going for sport coats around here. Something tells me the selection in Wisconsin isn’t so great, though…
Comment by Lyle_s — May 14, 2008 @ 5:53 pm
freakin genius
Comment by mims — May 14, 2008 @ 6:53 pm
what i really want to do is add length to sleeves. But that’s harder because I’ll never find material that matches. I’ve considered flexible tubing at the elbows to increase length. Maybe you have an idea?
Comment by Rolston — May 15, 2008 @ 12:59 am
Maybe you could take pictures of the fabric and use some silk screening process to get the fabric image transferred to some material you can sew on?
Also, a coat might look interesting if you could insert the new fabric at the shoulder seam and reattach the rest of the arm below the new fabric. It might look cool to have a different material, then?
Comment by Lyle_s — May 15, 2008 @ 12:31 pm
Good Lord! You’re the world’s manliest fashionista.
Comment by ebony — May 15, 2008 @ 12:37 pm
Actually lyle I have found the thrift store shopping in WI is the best! People hold onto their shit longer and then dump it at the donation box when mom, dad, uncle, brother dies. I swear the thrift stores there are a gold mine. Even in Madison where there is a greater number of hipsters.(are they still called that?)
Comment by al — May 16, 2008 @ 12:46 pm
The shoulder is the hardest part of a suit, since it is a tapered cylinder. Hard to sew. But I’ll give it a shot.
Comment by Rolston — May 16, 2008 @ 8:28 pm
OK, yeah that does sound tough.
Here’s another idea: Sew a different fabric at the bottom of the sleeve in such a manner that it appears the sleeves are so long that you’ve had to fold them over once!
Now that’s ingenuity. I should have been a grandmother.
Comment by Lyle_s — May 17, 2008 @ 9:18 am
it’s not too late Lyle, for that grandmother thing. I’m gonna try your idea.
Comment by Rolston — May 17, 2008 @ 12:21 pm