I don’t know if anyone watches Elementary, but seriously, it’s worth a watch alone for Lucy Liu’s wardrobe. Their stylist has her wearing some great clothes–always with interesting construction details. Jonny Lee Miller is also styled very very well, but he’s a man, so I don’t care a ton. Many times I’ve sat down to watch it thinking that I should have a sketch pad handy, but then I discovered this blog which so helpfully lists the details of the clothes worn each episode.
The inspiration in question today is a printed wool t-shirt from Zara with a faux leather panel on the sleeve. So so easy to do.
Suede Sleeve Panel Sweater
I’ve had this ringspun cotton sweater knit in my stash since last year and hadn’t figured out what I wanted to do with it until I saw this t-shirt. I didn’t want to end up with yet another ivory sweater.
As luck would have it, I found 2 pieces of faux suede in the form of upholstery samples at the FIDM Scholarship Store in L.A. They were only $0.50/each.
Back at home, I measured how far up my arm I wanted the panels to come and cut 2 pieces that sat mostly on the front side of my sleeve. In retrospect, I should have allowed more ease for myself in the sleeve to account for the lack of stretch. The sleeve is fitted, but my wrists have always been thin, so it works, but next time I’ll add 1/4″ extra in the side seams of the sleeve. My applique roughly looks like this not in the unsewn form:
Consulting More Fabric Saavy, Sandra Betzina recommends a 75/11 stretch needle for suede–great, I was using that anyway for my knit. I stitched on the applique to a lighter weight ivory knit that I had so that the bulk of the garment would be centered in the body and not all over. I used the same light knit to bind the neckline.
The pattern is my TNT t-shirt + scoop neck variant I picked up from an Ottobre pattern.
In a flurry of writing, I’ve drafted no less than 5 posts this morning which I’ll be sharing in the next couple of days to get myself caught up with blogging.
Let’s keep the conversation going! Check out my sewing dreams and inspiration on Pinterest, and keep up to date on my projects on Instagram and Facebook.
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Elizabeth Farr is the writer behind the Elizabeth Made This blog where she shares helpful sewing tips, step by step sewing tutorials and videos to help you explore your creativity through sewing. She has written sewing Eguides and patterns, been a featured teacher at Rebecca Page’s Sewing Summit and Jennifer Maker’s Holiday Maker Fest and her work has appeared in Seamwork and Altered Couture magazines. She also created a line of refashioned garments for SEWN Denver. When her sewing machine isn’t humming, she’s playing and teaching violin, and hanging around a good strategic board game with her husband and 4 kids.
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