McCall’s 9206 & Duplex Sleeve Tutorial

I’m finally getting my pictures uploaded as I type this, so I’m updating my review on PR also. McCall’s 9206 was supposed to be a simple kid’s shirt that I hoped would work for my little guy this winter since he currently has 1 (yes, really) long-sleeved shirt that fits him, and it’s in pretty sad condition. I had went to the city to the sewing store to buy some fabric, but didn’t get enough to make the sleeves (course, once you see the review pictures, you’ll see why I’m not too worried about this being the case on the rest of them) so I had to make some duplex sleeves to get the proper length for a boy’s long-sleeved shirt. And because I had to do some thinking on how to do this without something to compare it to, I thought maybe others were in the same predicament. It didn’t help that I am just not sure about sewing knits on a sewing machine, I was racking my brain to come up with a good way to do it on my serger, but finally opted to do it on the sewing machine because that seemed to be the only way to do it.

You can see my review of the pattern HERE.

On to the tutorial! 🙂 (NOTE: This is a mockup–it’s not perfectly straight or anything, but be sure to be more precise on your final product. :-)) I ended up with a gallery by accident, hopefully the pictures and instructions will still be fairly intuitive. 🙂

First, you’ll need a sleeve that has a long sleeve and a short sleeve option (McCall’s 9206 does) trace out the upper (short) sleeve, including the hem allowance.

Trace out the long sleeve version, including the hem allowance on your pattern paper, and determine where you need to cut off the top to match up with the bottom of the short sleeve. Once you’ve determined where you need to cut off, break out the scissors and whack it off.

Cut out your sleeve pieces as usual, and then take your upper sleeve fabric (wrong side up) and fold up the hem allowance. Press. Lay your lower sleeve fabric (also wrong side up) on top of the upper sleeve you just pressed, and pin. Once you have it pinned in place, choose a stretchy stitch on your sewing machine. On my Pfaff 2038, it was stitch 7–a “Closed Overlock Stitch”. I stitched with the left edge of my presserfoot against the raw edges of the fabric, but it’s really however you feel comfortable setting it up, as long as you have something to guide you.

Rinse and repeat, and VOILA! Double layer (duplex) sleeves! 🙂