atherleisure | Sleeve Support

I made sleeve supports for my 1830's dress following

mandie_rw's method that she wrote about on her blog and in a journal entry. She even gave me the rough measurements of her outer layer in the comments of the latter.

I actually took more or less step-by-step pictures to share the process.

The inner piece started as the inner sleeve from the 1798-1805 dress in Patterns of Fashion, I think. I found the muslin in a pile of muslin bits and chopped off the sleeve head then duplicated it for the other one.

The outer piece was about 10"x28" plus seam allowances. Then I trimmed the last 2" on each end to match the inner sleeve and drew a straight line about 7" long to the outer limits - no good reason except that my ruler was about 7" long and it looked decent.

I gathered the outer pieces between the places where they began to widen and sewed them to the inner sleeve at top and bottom.

Then I turned them right side out and basted one end closed.

That made it time to stuff them. Not finding a cheap pillow like Amanda did, I bought 90/10 goose feather/down pillow stuffing on Amazon. I bought a half-pound and probably used about half of it. Since I don't have a kitchen scale or anything like it, I can't be more accurate. It looks like I used less, but it's less densely stuffed in the bag now. You could probably get away with a quarter-pound.

Like Amanda, I did it outside, though I don't think the neighbors thought I was crazy since I have a fenced backyard and kept it pretty clean. I pinned it closed before bringing it inside, just in case.

I flat-felled the seam to the outside because I was machine-sewing these, and I knew I didn't want to try to turn them when it would make absolutely no difference. (I did do the actual felling by hand because wrestling a pillow-like object through the machine seemed like a bad idea.) Then I tacked on some twill tape ties that are 11"-12" long. Again, there's no good reason for the length except that they're long enough and were half the length of a couple of odd bits of tape I had lying around.

Of course, there's a mate because one sleeve support would be too ridiculous for words.

Then there are mating ties in the dress armscyes.

You have to wait for pictures of the dress with and without the sleeve supports until I feel like putting on my stays.

ETA: I would not recommend making these out of muslin. Something with a tighter weave is required. After a few wearings, the feathers have started to poke through the fabric. It hasn't gotten bad yet, but for longevity a sheeting or something would be more appropriate.