 What is it about sewing patterns and sleeve plackets? I don't know about you, but this whole concept of cutting into your sleeve and just applying a little bit of bias tape and calling that a sleeve placket is really annoying to me. I like to make clothes that resemble ready to wear clothes that you can buy in the store. This is a shirt that I got at Goodwill and look how beautiful their sleeve placket is. It's gorgeous. And it just makes for a much more professional, much more finished looking garment. This to me looks really sloppy and I'm just not gonna do it anymore. If I'm gonna take the time to make a tailored button-down shirt, then all of it is going to look superb, not just the placket or the collar or whatever. I want the sleeves to look just as great as everything else. Which brings me to the latest and greatest addition to Luna Graphics Co's collection of sewing tools, the sleeve placket template. So today I am gonna walk you through how to use the sleeve placket template with the printed sewing instructions as a guide so that you can achieve beautiful professional sleeve plackets just like you would find in your ready to wear clothes. Obviously this is not an actual garment. Strawberries and text might suit some of you but this is just illustrative. So I wanted to pick two fabrics that looked completely different so you could get through the instructions easier would be better able to tell right sides and wrong sides and what was the sleeve and what was the placket so that there was no confusion. So don't think I've completely lost my mind here with my fabric choice. I do have a cute fabric picked out that I'm gonna be applying this technique to but for this one I just wanted to do a quick tutorial to show you guys how to use the template and how great this little product is. So let's get started. I have cut out my sleeve piece. I have pressed it and then I also pressed it in half. You can do right sides together, wrong sides together. It doesn't matter, pressed it fully in half so that I could have a crease line there to know what would be the front half and the back half of my sleeve piece. And the easiest way to determine which is the front and which is the back most well-designed sleeve pieces will have one side with one notch cut into it and then another side with two notches cut into it. Can you guys see the two notches? The side with the two notches is going to be the back of your sleeve. So we know that this left side is the back of our sleeve. The next step is to mark out your seam allowances for this pattern and most patterns it's five eighths. So I just made a little dash along the seam line there and then I also did the same thing for the bottom half of the sleeve. You can see that my sleeve has a slight curve to it. This creates a nice little detail and makes the sleeve hit your wrist in a more tailored, more flattering way. It's very subtle, but it's there. And so then we need to after the seam allowance is marked here we need to measure this length from the center where we have the crease all the way out to where the seam line is for the outer portion of the sleeve. And because it's on a curve you can't just like slap a ruler on it and call it a day that won't be super accurate. So instead I like to use Lunagraphics curve ruler. This thing comes in really handy whenever you're measuring anything on a curve whether it be a waistband or a collar or in our example a small subtle curve on a sleeve hem. So you just start the ruler at the zero point and then you measure along your marked seam allowance and that measurement for me was seven inches. And so then half of seven is three and a half. So you go back to your original starting point and measure out three and a half and we will land right here where it is marked. So now you know that that is where after we get our template cut out that is where the red line is going to go. So your sleeve piece is fully prepared at this point. And now we just need to move on to the sleeve placket. So you lay your placket on your fabric. You're gonna need two of them, obviously one for each sleeve. And then you need to trace the perimeter of the template. And then additionally you need to go in where each of these little holes are and you make a little mark. You go into where the hole is and you make a little mark. These little acrylic templates are so perfect for getting super accurate marks because it's just big enough for your pen to go in and allows you to mark those dots very precisely. So mark all of the holes, trace out the perimeter and then cut out your template and we will meet back after that's done. And there's one more place left to mark and that is all along these little notches that are cut into the acrylic. So you just want to put your pen in that little slot and trace that off. You could do this after or before you cut out the template but in my opinion it's more accurate to do it this way so that you don't accidentally cut off any of the marks you made. I don't know, it's just personal preference. So once that's done you have all of your little hash marks and all of your little dots. So you're going to take your scissors and you're going to snip into all of these little marks and then you're going to take your marking pen and a ruler or any straight edge. You could actually just use the straight edge of the template itself and connect the dots of the cut line, the red line that you have essentially drawn in with your dots and your marking line. You just want to trace in that box and the cutting line. I'll show you what that looks like here in a second. Okay, so I have cut little slits into my fabric. Hard to see, they're very small. But all along all those little marks and I've drawn in my box. You can see the dash marks along here and then the solid cut line here. The next step is going to be to draw in all of these lines, one, two, three, four, five and six. And basically you are just connecting one dash down to the next dash and you just make all six of those lines. And then you also, I went ahead and drew it in because I figured it'd be hard to see but you also want to draw in this little cut line here as well. Okay, the next and final couple of steps for preparing the sleeve placket are to snip this little cutting line here that I showed you before and to place your steamer seam on the outermost sections of the placket. On the template they are grayed out so you know exactly where they go but leave the paper backing on. So now we have our finished prepared sleeve and our prepared placket and we're gonna start attaching these two together. So the first step to doing that is to pin the placket to the sleeve with the placket's right side, facing the sleeve's wrong side. And you are going to find that the vent line that we made when we measured half the distance between the outer sleeve seam line and the center of the sleeve. Remember that three and a half inch measurement we found? We are going to place the line that has all of the dots on it. We're gonna line that line up with the vent line that we measured on our sleeve. Again, it is the right side of the placket to the wrong side of the fabric and you get it placed on there like so. And then you're gonna go to your sewing machine and you're gonna sew around the box that you made with the dotted lines from the template. So all the lines that is around the red line that is what you were going to sew next. All right, can you see where I sewed the box around this, the red markings on the template? So that is all done. Now we are going to take our scissors and in a sheer leap of faith, we are going to cut into our fabric through both layers all the way up the red line to this point here and then we're gonna pivot and cut into that corner and then come back and cut into this corner here being careful to cut two but not through any of our stitching. So take a deep breath, grab your scissors and go for it. Ta-da, it's completely cut open. Okay, now we are gonna move over to our ironing board and we're gonna start pressing the fabric along the lines, the six lines that we have made but there is an order to which you should do them for the best accuracy and just cause it's easier and you burn less of your fingers. So you need to start with fold line three which is actually one that matches up with the box that we just sewed. So you wanna press the fabric over to the side like this and press all along this, what is now a seam. And then unfold it and then find line number two and take your fabric and fold it over, wrong sides together and again you still have these little notches up at the top to help guide you. So you'll press that and then you'll take line number one which is the edge of the steamer seam, paper backing still on and you wanna press that seam there. So you'll do these three in this order, three, two, one and then on this side you'll do the same thing but you'll go four, five, six. So you'll press it this way along number four and then you'll press it, yep, this way along number five and remember to get this little doodad up here, boop. And then number six is kind of in line with the edge of the steamer seam, paper backing still on. Press that one like that. So I'll meet you back here after I've got all my lines pressed. Okay, so there you have it. We have folded or pressed our placket along all of those fold lines and you can kind of tell that it's wanting to like curl up on itself which is exactly what we want. So now we are gonna start working from the right side. So flip over your sleeve and pull out the little edge only. You can also pull off the paper backing of your steamer seam and then fold along those creases that you just made to encase this raw edge here like so. And it kind of like I said already wants to do it a little bit, you're just encouraging it along. So you've got one edge still completely raw. We're not really messing with that one. And this one, we have folded everything in. So you wanna get this a good press so that your steamer seam can adhere. And then you're going to run a topstitch line all along this outer edge of the placket. And then you're gonna pivot right here. This is a quarter of an inch from the raw edge. I went ahead and marked a little line. And you're going to pivot and then come across here and then we'll work on the left hand side after this is nice and secure. Voila, now we have the right side of our sleeve placket completely finished. You can see how neat and tidy everything is on the inside. We still have this little raw doodad here and that's okay. That's gonna get covered up with the left side. You wanna kind of do the same thing with the left side. Peel off the backing of the steamer seam like so. And then fold that in and then fold this edge over the stitch line that you've already made to create, to encase that itty bitty raw edge that's in there. So you've got this laying perfectly straight along that stitching line that you have already made. And you're gonna get that all nice and neatly pressed. And then you are going to fold in these corners according to this illustration. So basically you just fold one of them at a 90 degree angle. I do it so that the raw edges match up over here. Like so, obviously much neater whenever I have two hands to use and then fold the other corner back so that those edges meet up right there. And then press it all down. Again, much neater with two hands. Okay, you get the idea. So you get a little point going there, right? All nice and pressed. And then you want to top stitch again all along this top stitch again, all along this raw edge here. And you're gonna come up to the corner here, pivot to the point, pivot down to the other corner, come back down about and maybe half an inch. You wanna come down a little bit lower than this stitching line right here because you need to encase that. So come down, it's usually, that's probably about an inch and then come across the other edge. So you're making an interesting little shape coming up the edge to the peak, back down, down again, and over to the left. Let me show you what that looks like after this is all done. And there you have it. This is our completed sleeve placket. I think it will rival anything that you can find on your ready to wear shirts. It looks just as great on the outside as it does on the inside. It's really just so beautiful and really easy to construct with the help of the sleeve placket template. So if you love this tool as much as I think that you will, there is a link in the description box to head to Claire's Etsy shop, Lunagraphics Co's Etsy shop. You can also use the coupon code LENSI20, L-I-N-D-S-E-Y 20 for 20% off your sleeve placket template. This will expire at the end of June, 2018. So head over there now and check it out. While you're there, of course, I would be remiss if I didn't mention my curve rulers that I love so much. These will be there as well. I seriously use these all the time and this is gonna be in heavy rotation as I start to make up some button up shirts to add some separates to my wardrobe. So that'll do it for me today. Thank you so much for watching and I will see you next time. Bye.