$5 Friday: Pleated Shoulder Seams

 What happens when Grace is cooped up in the house all day with her sick older brother and a grumpy baby sister—one of whom is watching her tv and the other is playing with all of her toys—and none of them are in a mood to share?

She stomps around the house and declares that “today is the worst day ever!”

Which is exactly what she did T minus 10 seconds before this picture was taken.

Poor Grace…she is used to her daily routine and yesterday was not routine AT ALL but I promised her that today will be better…and it will be.

Anyways, this post isn’t about Gracie’s horrible, terrible, no good, very bad day.  It’s about the dress and in particular the sleeves on that dress that this post is about.

A long time ago I saw Kelly Rippa on some show wearing some shirt that was white and it had a little line of ruffles coming out of the shoulder seam. And ever since I saw that shirt I wanted to make something similar for Grace and the other day I finally did it.Now Kelly’s shirt was some soft flowing thing but I made Grace’s ruffled shoulder seam out of tulle and put it on a light weight denim dress.  It was really easy to do and could be done to any sleeve on any shirt or dress.  In fact, I’ve got a knit version in the works which I will share soon but for now I’ll just give you a quick run down of what I did to add a ruffle into Gracie’s shoulder seam.

First I cut a strip of tulle off of one of those 6 inch wide rolls of tulle that you can buy at places like JoAnn’s.  Then I folded it in half and ironed it flat. (I cut it about twice as long as the length that I wanted the pleats to cover.)

 

Next I folded the tulle into pleats, ironed it, and pinned it to the right side of her dress along the edge where her sleeve would be attached.

After that I ran a basting stitch to hold the tulle to the right side of the fabric and then cut off the excess tulle.

Next I pinned the sleeve (right sides together) to the dress like I normally would and sewed them up.   (The only difference is that the tulle is in between the two right sides of fabric.)

 And when I finished up the dress she has a sweet little ruffle to spruce up an otherwise plain dress.

I like the ruffle pleats in the seam line.

It’s an inexpensive and easy way to add character to any pattern.

And even though Grace had a rough afternoon she had to agree that she liked the dress…and the sleeves…and perked up a little when I told her she could wear it until bedtime.

Now, it’s time to go…we have to make sure that today is a better day than yesterday.

Wish me luck!

liZ

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