Regency Shirt: Part 3 (cuff construction)

I wanted to take some time to show how the cuffs were put together. The collar was done in the same way. The biggest challenge is getting the huge expanse of fabric from the sleeve to fit into the same space as the much smaller cuff band.

To start, I ran two rows of basting stitches across the edge of the sleeve. For this I just used two strands of cheap thread for each one, so it would be stronger.

 A closeup of the basting stitches:

Then I marked the centre, and each quarter, with pins on both the sleeve and the cuff. You can see that the sleeve is about three times wider than the cuff.

I matched the points, and pinned the sleeve to the cuff at those points.

I drew up the basting stitches, making lots of small pleats. I tried as hard as possible to get the pleats even in each quarter of the sleeve, then stuck a lot of pins in to hold it in place.

Here's where I could have chosen to make strong back stitches along the inside of the cuff front, to attach it to the sleeve. Instead I did the historical method mentioned in the pattern instructions, and simply basted across the pleats.

Here's the basted line with the pins removed.

I then folded up the cuff along the basted line and, with the original basting stitches in place - the ones used to form the pleats - I hem stitched the cuff to the pleats.

I then turned the sleeve over, and finally removed the original basting stitches.  I left in the basting stitch I used to hold the cuff and pleats in place. All that's left to do is to hem stitch this back side to the pleats in the same way as the front.

All finished! A nice poofy sleeve.