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Luxury Peel and Stick Wallpaper
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- Gifts & Goods
- Gift Card
Luxury Peel and Stick Wallpaper
Hey everyone! If you’ve ever seen me around the great wide web, especially in the RCF Facebook group, you’ll know that I hack a puff sleeve onto virtually everything. I love to give things just the tiniest bit of extra flair and sensory issues sometimes make it really uncomfortable for me to wear fully fitted sleeves. Thankfully, adding a puff sleeve or even just adding a bit of ease to a fitted sleeve is a breeze, and I’m going to show you my favorite method for it today.
For starters you’ll need a few supplies:
For this tutorial I’ll be using the Ellie and Mac “Sweetie Pie” Dress. For fabric I went with this AMAZING Tri-Blend Jersey that I’ll share a bit more about at the end!
First step is to decide how long you want your sleeve and what kind of puff; I like to do an elbow length sleeve and then you want to make sure you leave yourself enough of a hem allowance to create your elastic casing. Since I’m using ¼” elastic I gave myself a ½” hem allowance to turn into a ½” width casing.
The method I use to create puff sleeves is called “Slash and Spread”. This can be used in a few ways. For this tutorial I’ll be creating a puff towards the bottom of the sleeve so we will leave the armscye shape at the top of the sleeve intact. (If you wanted to create a top-only puff you’d “slash and spread” the top and gather in. If you wanted a huge extra-poofy all-over sleeve you could do both and gather both the top and bottom to match your armscye.) For the slash-and-spread you want to alter the pattern piece first before we cut it out of your fabric.
Begin altering your pattern piece by taking your sleeve piece and marking the points where the upper curve ends like so
Then beginning from either end measure and draw a line on your pattern piece every 2” from curve mark to curve mark (it’s okay if it doesn’t end up perfectly even), if you’re on the very low end of a size range smaller, 1” increments, may be necessary.
After all of your lines are drawn between your curve marks carefully begin to cut the lines, DO NOT CUT ALL THE WAY THROUGH, you want to cut to about ¼” below the top of the sleeve, enough to be able to spread the pieces but not enough to rip easily. You’re going to end up with this funky fringe-y piece that looks sort of like abstract art of an octopus, and this is where we trust the process.
Next grab your contrasting paper, I did purple just cause it made me happy. There’s no rules about the color paper you use. I use construction paper for these sorts of “manual edits” simply for affordability. It works great! Line your octopus-adjacent slashed up sleeve piece to either the top of your ruler or your lined cutting mat, layer your second/contrast sheet below. Now here’s where you decide the POOF FACTOR. I went subtle for this so I had 7 slashes and I spread and added 1 and ¼” between each slash. So each purple section you see is 1.25” at the bottom of the sleeve. TAPE APPROPRIATELY, you don’t want this shifting around on you while cutting your fabric. And ta-dah, pattern piece crafted!
Now we get to the actual fabric cutting. After you’ve prewashed and prepped your fabric, lay it out and begin cutting. You’ll cut 2 sleeve pieces mirrored. Make sure if your sleeve armscye indicates a distinct front and back you mark or pin that so it fits the armscye correctly.
Now you’re going to create a casing! I turned my seam ½” and pinned before sewing. I leave 1” open right near my under-arm seam so it’s less visible, and this created my elastic casing to thread my elastic through. For elastic I measure the point of the arm the sleeve will stop at and then subtract 1-1.5” from the elastic length based on how stretchy it is. This also accounts for about ½” overlap to sew the elastic into a loop within the casing.
There’s loads of cool tools for threading elastic but I like to use my tried-and-true (from summer camp scrunchie making days); a safety pin to pin the elastic to the casing edge and a safety pin to guide it through.
Then I stitch the elastic together, and top stitch the casing closed. Lather, rinse and repeat…and boom! Two new puff sleeves hacked and attached to any pattern of your choosing!
But don’t go just yet! While I’ve got you here: let’s talk Tri-Blend Jersey! Tri-Blend is a poly/cotton/rayon blend that is lightweight without being too sheer. It’s got 50% 2-way stretch with a SMIDGE of vertical stretch. What I love most about it is that it’s got a really cool heathered texture to it that lends itself stunningly to so many prints. If you love RCF’s Oatmeal French Terry, think of Tri-Blend as Oatmeal French Terry’s (literally) cooler cousin, both are great for elevating those prints with texture and a unique look. Slub knit and Tri-Blend textures are always very trendy in warm months and it’s not surprising to me, they’re really visually interesting fabrics that bring something special to any project you can imagine. Tees, dresses, cardigans, swim cover ups, lightweight beachy pullovers and hoodies…so many options! Check out Tri-Blend on your next custom print, or grab a Club print like this floral design by Emily Ferguson!
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