Sleeve Improvement

First I want to acknowledge and thank Claire Kennedy who generously shared knowledge and opinion regarding the sleeve heads. Thanks, Claire! I have narrow shoulders. I can also  use all the width I can get to balance the hip area. I tried shoulder pads of varying styles and thickness and they just didn't have the correct look for this jacket. I also was not crazy about the "soft hang" of the sleeve head area on my narrow shoulders. They needed a bit of support.

I remembered and made note of one of Claire's blog posts when she did a CJ. She shared the same opinion, that the shoulder needed a bit of support. FWIW, stronger shoulder lines are definitely the trend. We both know that this is not the traditional "sweatery" look but personal preference and when you sew for yourself, its all about personal preference. After consulting with Claire and also using my gut instincts I sewed the sleeve and lining into the bodice and lining like any blouse or jacket. This is not the traditional Chanel method of treating the lining and boucle separately.  To get the slight lift I wanted I took a poly cord and stitched it the only the area between the notches around the cap. The seam was then bound all around with silk charmeuse. Can you tell I am now out of my lovely print? Luckily I had some silk charmeuse in the stash in a color that worked well. Per Claire, the SAs on the lower part of the armscye were trimmed back and the SA around the cap left in place and pressed toward the sleeve. Because of the change in thickness of the SAs, the binding is fairly wide, but it is so thin it doesn't add any additional bulk and looks pretty. Doing this gives the cap just the slight bit of lift I wanted as you will see shortly. A bit of personal maintenance and I will be ready to try on and model....Bunny