Uniform Modification 03: Cuffed Short Sleeves

Hey all! I'm back with a quick little tutorial on how to give your Uniform Tunic a cute little cuffed sleeve like the one shown above. This will work on both the original pattern as well as if you've modified it into a dress. You can also apply these same principles to any sleeve pattern to get a similar look! Let's dive in.

To begin you'll need to figure out how long you want your finished sleeve to be. I want my finished sleeve to be 8 ½" long along the outer edge of my arm so I'm taking that 8 ½" (you'll use whatever length you want here) and adding 2 ¼" to that. Take that measurement (12" in my case) and draw a line from the top of the sleeve cap down, parallel to the grain line, then square that marking out from the grain line. Cut and remove the lower portion of the sleeve.

Draw a line from each underarm corner, down to the new lower edge of the sleeve. These should be parallel with the grain line as well. These lines are your new underarm seams.

We’re making a 1 ½” cuff here so we’ll need to mark each of the fold lines at this point. Mark a line ¾” up from the lower edge, then another 1 ½” from that line. The final line will also be 1 ½” from the previous line. Your pattern should look like the one above.

This sleeve is straightforward to sew as well. Sew the underarm seam as you would according to the instructions in the pattern booklet.

With the sleeve right side up, fold the lower edge up along the top dashed line, 3 ¾", and press. Then fold and press ¼" over for the hem allowance.

Fold the hem edge over another ½" and press.

Fold the hem edge down to meet the lower edge, you're creating the cuff right now.

Tuck the new sleeve length edge into the hem edge and pin in place catching only the hem edge and sleeve, not the cuff.

Fold the sleeve down and out of the way, stitch along the edge of the hem anchoring the hem in place. You may want to do a small bar tack at the underarm of the cuff to keep it from folding down while being worn.

If you're looking for the tutorial on how we turned the Uniform Tunic into this dress you can find that here: Uniform Dress Variation. If you have any q's just let us know in the comments below!