 Hello and welcome back to the McCalls 8255 Sew Along. Today is our last day of sewing together. It is bittersweet. If you have been following along up until this point then you have a 90% completed garment. All we have left to do are the sleeves and if you're following along in the workbook then you know day four is dedicated to the arm side and the sleeves whether you're doing this sleeveless version or any version of the sleeve short sleeve three-quarter sleeve or long sleeve we are going to tackle that today. So without further ado let's get to making our sleeves. So exciting! So you should have basted your lining and your main fabric all around the arm size so they don't come so they don't separate and shift and act all weird when you go to put the sleeve on. Okay if that's the only prep work you need to do like on the actual bodice. On the sleeve itself we obviously have a few options for sleeves. Where's the pattern cover? Here we go. So we have A which is what I'm making right? Yes it's been so long um which is a little short sleeve that has some gathers at the top. We have B which is like super gathered. We have D which is a long sleeve with no gathers and then if you're making C at this point you just attach your bias binding. So it's going to be similar construction for everyone. The order is the same. What you do up here is the only thing that's going to be different and then obviously how long your sleeve is. It's going to be different but everybody should be able to follow along no matter which sleeve you are making. So our first step is to gather the sleeve. We have double notch here. This always indicates the back of your sleeve. Single notch here always indicates the front of your sleeve. Always, always, always in big four. I love that they do that because that makes it so easy when the sleeve kind of looks symmetrical but it's not um nor should it be. So this guy here these dots here are going to be your shoulder seam and then these are going to match up with notches that are on your bodice. Okay um was that it? Oh and then a one inch hem we have down here as well. So first step is going to be to put in your gathered stitches. So we're gathering from the small dot all the way through this small dot all the way through this small dot and I've recently started doing my gathering stitches. I don't know if you guys saw this hack. It kind of went around the internet for a little while a few months ago but you start your gathered you start your basting stitch your gathering stitch um on one end you go all the way around pivot and like square it off and then come back this way. So it's all one technical stitch. That way you don't run the risk of your gathering stitches coming out which is so annoying. So I've been doing that lately. I have a love hate with it but mostly a love. So that's what I'm doing today um gathering that and then before we gather them up and before we move on to step number 17 this is my little hack that I've been doing gosh for years now but I like to pre-press my hems. So while they are still flat I will take my little hem gauge. This is a one inch hem so I will measure two inches above the raw edge and put a little mark there all the way around the hem and that's because if we were to mark at one inch and then you go to turn it up you can't see your mark anymore and so that was always super inaccurate. So I do it at two inches I'm just going to come up here press it up once till it meets that marking I just made and then I'm going to turn it under and get our finished hem that way. Okay so just pressing not sewing then we are gathering and stitching the underarm seams together all over at the machine I'll show you that. Okay so I have my sleeve pre-pressed so we just have the little creases in there nothing has been sewn it's just pressed and those will hold themselves in place and make it easier for us to make an accurate hem once the sleeve is like around tube. All right so we've got basting stitched set we are going from the small dots. Did I not transfer those? Oh come on I did not so we're just going to guess hopefully you transferred yours. I've got this at seven eighths of a seam allowance dropping my needle not back stitching nothing and just coming around around to the other side to the other small dot okay then leave your needle down turn this pivot 90 degrees and now you're sewing toward the raw edge like two stitches maybe and then pivot again and now you're sewing with this the stitch line you just made at the edge of your presser foot that's gonna be roughly three eighths half an inch something like that pull this out nice long tail and then and then when you go to pull this up this side is anchored down and so your gathers won't come out the other end you know you don't have to be super careful about that and you can get like a really nice gather this is perfect for actual gathered sleeves and not necessarily sleeves that are eased in but something where you want like a really good strong gather so we're pulling up from the bobbin both threads and see how it won't come undone it just anchors in on the other side okay so this is our cutie little gathered sleeve isn't that great oh she looks so cute all right so now we undo the creases into him and we're going to sew the um underarm seam now i've been making the lines top so i have not had to surge a single thing but this will be a raw edge so i can either surge this which is what i'm going to do because i already have white serger thread ready to go um we can do a french seam also which would be really nice so pick your poison and then look how cool this is because we pre-pressed our hem all you do is um imagine this is surged imagine the seam we just sewed is surged and then all of this gets pressed up or turned up really into place and the little creases will hold the hem so we don't have to go to our iron and like futz with it now that it's like this little tube thing isn't that great so i'm going to surge and then sew my hem all right now repeat all of this for the other sleeve and then i'll meet you back at the cutting table okay so now we've got our top and our two sleeves and we need to attach these i'm going to show you one and then obviously we repeat for the other side so remember how i showed you how to know where the front and the back of the sleeve is so we've got the back with the two notches and the front with a single notch we need to turn our garment inside out and we are going to stick the sleeve in matching the underarm seam with the side seam right you slip that in like that and then you double check do i have the back of my sleeve touching the back of my garment if so carry on if not then you need to switch these out so that your other sleeve whoops your other sleeve goes in here instead but i think i just guessed and had it right so the sewing gods are loving me in that way today and i'm going to pin at all of the notches to start so under arm seam then just pivot around we've got this little notch down here we've got this notch that marks the start of our gathered stitches and then i'm going to skip the shoulder and then do the other side the same way i just did so we're going to meet up at the shoulder yeah i pretty much had that spot on if you need to adjust your gathering stitches this is when you would do it okay so now we come to our shoulder and we're trying to find that notch at the top of our sleeve which is right here okay and then that gets pinned in and at this point you just want to juge juge it up so that the gathers are distributed as evenly as possible that looks pretty good i'm going to put one more pin in here and then we're going to go to our sewing machines and stitch all the way around this armhole and then also surge it and then apply the other sleeve sleeves are in and they're really really cute so a couple of things you need to go put on a td show sit up by the pool whatever you want to do and spend some time removing your stay stitching from the bodice and then removing your gathering stitches from the sleeve and i want to show you hopefully you can see the difference this one i did right can you see how like cute and puffy and like perfect that one is and in this one because the gathering stitches are still in there it's just a little bit more sad so go ahead remove those they should come out really easily and you guys our little tops are done well how do you feel you have finished macaws 8255 we've sewn it together it's been so fun and i hope you love your tops i will be back on monday this very next coming monday to do a reveal i'm going to model it for you guys show you how i'll style it you know all of that great stuff and kind of give you a bit of a pattern review like i typically do on garments that i make i hope you will host yours to the internet as well whether that is instagram tick tock facebook pinterest wherever you post photos i hope you'll do that and that you will tag me so that i can see it i have had a blast chatting with you guys this week either in the comment section of the video or if you're a hymn cider doing our live virtual chats like i said i hope you love your top i love sewing with you and i'll see you all very soon