Adding Flutter Sleeves to a Tank Top: Tutorial

In case you missed me on Family Ever After a couple weeks ago, here is the tutorial I did for her Sewlebrity Crush Series.

My little girl loves clothes.  She is nearly four and loves the color pink!  She has had this boring tank top in her closet for a while, and it never gets worn.  So I decided I’d add some flutter sleeves to add interest to the shirt. I know these aren’t your traditional flutter sleeves, but there are a lot of shirts that are this style now, and I’m not sure what the sleeves are called, so we’ll call them flutter sleeves since that’s the name that drew my four year old in.

First, start with a tank top and an extra shirt you are ok to cut into.  The size of the shirt depends on how big your tank top is and how far down the tank top you want the sleeves to go, so you might need to play around with that a bit.  I used an existing shirt so I could use the finished hem, but you could always hem your own if you wanted.

Measure from the top of the tank top, down to where you want your sleeve to end.  I wanted mine to end close to 11”. 

So I cut out a portion of the shirt that allowed me to fold it in half and get about 11” across (remember, FOLDED in half)

The width of this piece of fabric is about 6”.

Fold the portion of your shirt for the sleeve in half.

Place the tank top on top.  Match the edge of the tank top with the raw side of the folded piece, and match the bottom to the corner where the finished edge is. (next three pictures demonstrate how this was done).

Now cut your sleeve to match the shape of the tank top.

Once you get that cut out, trace and cut another sleeve.

So here is your shape of the sleeve.  Sew the seam that will go down the length under the arm-hole of the tank top.  You can see my stitching on it below.  **Please note, you can finish this seam with a french seam, so that the raw seam isn’t showing as well under their arms.  It would give it a more finished look. 

Pin, right sides together, around the opening of the arm, matching the seams under the arms.

Sew the sleeve on, making sure to sew far enough in so the binding on the sleeve doesn’t show anymore.

Clip the curves inside the sleeve.

Now take the point that isn’t attached yet, and just start sewing from the point at the bottom, up to the opening of the sleeve.  I had to do it this way because it was too small to fit on my machine if I started at the seam and sewed down.  Again, if you finished the seam you see here with a french seam, you would be able to have a more finished look here.

And that is it!  It’s a pretty quick little fix!

And it made Poppy bust out dancing without being prompted.

I think this will get worn, now!  Thanks so much for having me today, Rachel!