Burda 02-2009 #118 Puff Sleeve Top and Tutorial

Wow, I need to start doing something with my hair on Saturdays. I made two of these tops today. You will only get to see one on me. The other one got chucked in the bin. I like the overall shape of it but the arms were a bitch to sew. Below you'll find a picture tutorial of what I did. No, it's not pretty but it worked.


I love this fabric. It's a wool/blend jersey. It's apple green with white/grey stripes running through it.



Okay, here she goes. I skipped taking pictures of the steps leading up to this one because they are pretty straight forward. For sake of clarity, I will call the gathered part of the sleeve The Sleeve and the part that it's gathered onto The Inside Sleeve. BWOF uses the same lingo for those parts and it's important later. Trust me on this. Gather the sleeve onto the inside sleeve and sew those onto the bodice pieces. Make sure you match the shoulder notches and the front notch on piece #1.


Put the front yoke right sides together (RST) with the front bodice/sleeves. I would notch the middle of the bodice and the middle of the front piece. There is some stretching to be done and that makes it a lot easier. Only sew from notch #5 to notch #5 on the other side.


Sew your side seams. I note notch #5 on most of the pictures below just to give you a reference point. In the picture below, you don't really need it but I labelled it anyway.

Sew from notch #5 to the side seam line. You are attaching it to the sleeves only -- not the inside sleeve. Sew just to the side seam line and get as close as possible.

Now, this is were it gets confusing and hard (if someone knows a better way, let us know!). Start at the side seam and sew around the sleeves with them RST. You only ever sew two layers at once. First you start in the middle with the sleeves and as you work your way around, you cross over and begin sewing the inside sleeve. It gets harder and harder because you are sewing yourself into a hole. Try to make it to notch #10. Sewing this way makes your sleeve turn inside itself and now you have to carefully turn it back right sides out.

This is what mine looks like on the inside. Not pretty, I know.

But, the outside looks nice.


Here's the one that didn't make it. I tried for an hour to rip threads out of stretch velour. For-get-it. I may make another one in this fabric because it was/is beautiful but I was destroying the fabric trying to tear it out.