Suit Tailoring Series: Shortening the Sleeves on a Suit Jacket
In our next installment of tailoring a suit jacket we are going to tackle one of the most common but still trickiest alterations; shortening a sleeve.
Though altering the sleeve length of a suit jacket is an extremely often-requested alteration it is surprisingly difficult, the silver lining of course is that there is an exact science and step-by-step procedure to succesfully completing this process.
Shortening suit jacket sleeve is much more complicated than just turning it up and stitching it back down, that would look terrible! To alter the suit jacket sleeve length, either to make it shorter or longer, requires the tailor to open the entire sleeve lining. So to begin we’re gonna pop off all of the buttons and get the lining separated from the suit jacket sleeve at the opening of the cuff and dive right in to altering this length.
This one is going to require a couple of specific tools and the most important one is a great iron. This particular procedure is really tricky without good steamy heat and an arm pressing board. There are a couple of other things that I prefer to have on hand as well such as good tailors chalk and a little bit of interfacing or more commonly known stitch which which is a type of fusible web that melts into a glue and helps with The placement and resetting of the sleeve as we close everything back up. You’ll also want to have some good sturdy hand sewing thread for when we put the buttons back on later, and my favorite is waxed skein, precut strands of nice heavy duty tailor thread that we will use at the very end.
Follow along with the video below to see the entire process! Check below for a list of linked tools!
I thought it would be helpful to include a quick over view of fusibles and interfacing, this can be a challenging concept so join me for an explanation below.
To catch up on all the ground we’ve covered, look back through the previous posts and read the entries starting with ‘Suit Tailoring Series’! Thanks for join us!
Tailor’s Tools: