Shortening sleeves?

Do you have a machine or are you going to hand sew? I recommend using a machine for this.

Do you having a seamstress or sewing shop locally? You could ask them for a quote if you don't feel like tackling it yourself.

There are several ways to do this if you Google. Not all involve taking the cuff off.

I seem to have spent all my life shortening sleeves, so it's definitely possible to do. But its often fiddly and takes longer than I expect. How I tackle it depends on the shape of the sleeve. Sometimes I'll unpick the shoulder seam and shorten it from there. Other times from above a cuff or at the wrist. Personally, I do this by hand sewing.

You could put tucks in the actual sleeve as an alternative.

I assume you are talking about a shirt with plackets - the two bits of folded fabric that edge the split in the sleeve

It’s fiddly and time consuming to do but perfectly possible.

Unpick and remove the cuff. Unpick and remove the two pieces of the placket.

Cut away the excess fabric at the cuff edge and lengthen the split in the fabric which houses the two placket pieces.

Reattach the placket pieces.

Reattach the cuff.

If the width of the sleeves tapers towards the cuff then there will be a bit of excess fabric at the cuff but with only 1.5 inches of length to remove, a light gather or small tuck would fix that.

If you don’t feel confident to try it on your new shirt try it on on old one first. Ask the charity shop for one from the bags of donations that aren’t fit to sell, the ones they sell to rag merchants. A small donation should suffice.

I have done this with countless shirts. My dear late husband was meticulous about business wear. His shirt sleeves had to show an exact ½ inch below his bespoke suit sleeves. As no range of off-the-rack shirts were ever “right” in this respect I had the task of altering them all. I got to the stage where I think I could have done it in my sleep!

It is a good quality shirt. I would take it and have it done by professional.

I often use the clear spiral hair ties and just use these to ruche them up.

I understand your problem Franski as a petite person myself. Have a lovely local Lady who does alterations which works well for me. Yes of course it adds to the cost of an already expensive item but maybe you have the skills and talent to do it yourself.

Another possibility is ,if you look around and see if there is a Repair cafe day somewhere close at hand. Here we have a choice of one or two. The idea behind it is to reduce landfill, keep things working as long as possible etc. So the people doing the repairs will be knowledgeable and competent at their specific jobs. Often retired professionals, or in my case the last time , the lady doing the sewing was an absolute magician, in both the quality and the speed she was able to do things. So you take your item to be mended or sewn or whatever to a desk. They sort of triage the work and send you off to the appropriate person, where there may be a queue or not. In our area we are not asked for specific payments, but asked to donate a fair amount. So the expert will tell you whether what you would like doing is possible, might give you even better ideas and then you can watch them work their magic. I sat whilst my sewing was being sorted, watching two electronic people solve the mystery of how to get into something that did not seem to have any opening, another person shown that their item was not worth mending, but they were happy to give the good bits from it to be spare parts, for other things. You might see a notice about a pop up day in your local library or paper. I was very pleased with the two jobs including one of those wretched zips that you can hardly see. An expert job was done, and I then had two items now ready to wear. I paid £10 which I thought was fair for all the work done, and it saved me a day of frustration and stress trying to do it myself.

I was asked to join the "experts" at our monthly Repair Cafe to do sewing repairs etc. I turned it down as there are small businesses who make their money doing precisely this - taking up hems, putting in new zips etc. My expertise has been built up over 50+ years. I'll obviously help out family and folk I love, but I believe in supporting small businesses and not taking their trade away. £10 for two jobs, particularly replacing an invisible zip was more than a bargain.

I have a very ditsy friend, her doings are legendary.
Another friend gave her a jacket that she didn’t like but the sleeves were too long so she decided to shorten them, she, like me, is no needle woman.She experimented with one and didn’t a bad job recall so next day tackled the other one.
No measuring she knew how much to cut off.
You’ve guessed it,she did the same one again, one still long, one half way up her arm.

Oppss, I once did this with my sons RAF uniform trousers 🤭

I'd also take it somewhere do get it done, many dry cleaning companies offer this type of service.
My father had a big neck and short arms, he used to wear those metal elasticated bands on his sleeves if he was wearing a jacket and wouldn't be taking it off, but otherwise my mother used to take out the sleeves from the armholes and shorten them at that end, leaving the cuff as it was. She was a wizard at alterations and used to regularly remove the waistbands of her own new trousers to alter them as her waist was wide relative to her hips.

I can recommend buying elastic sleeve garters from Amazon or another shop at a very reasonable price. I use them all the time, to hold sleeves in place. For an 'invisible' look fold the upper part neatly over the band. It seems to stay in place all day.

Usedtobeblonde 😁

Hi Franski If there are cuffs on the sleeves you might try just moving the buttons across to stop them hanging down too far...

Thanks everyone for your ideas and advice. I ended up taking it to a professional alterations placr. It's costing £15. Hopefully worth it xx

lizzypopbottle

Hi Franski If there are cuffs on the sleeves you might try just moving the buttons across to stop them hanging down too far...

I've done this before and it works very well. I think if you take it to a seamstress you'll find they will charge at least half the price you paid for the shirt as it's a fiddly job.

knspol seemed simple to me but, if I were that seamstress, £15 wouldn't cover my hourly rate and, as you say, it's a fiddly job! They are working for next to nothing, unless it's for a friend.

The shirt was £69 so it id (just about) worth it for me, but yes for the seamstress picky work for a paltry sum..

When I was working I used to use the 'sleeve garters' on my suits as I liked my jacket sleeves to be above my wrist bone.
Nowadays I use two rubber bands when necessary. They remain invisible.

Why not take it to a Repair cafe. I sew at one and we could do this for you.

My father always used to wear something called a sleeve garter. I thought they were pretty, but I would not dare to tell him that.

I used to narrow my mother's by folding and folding to put a tuck in www.theshapesoffabric.com/2020/01/26/how-to-manipulate-fabric-with-tucks/