Easy Refashion: Flutter Sleeves

Today I’m sharing a quick refashion project that made me fall in love with a favorite dress again. Here’s an easy way to give a dress a new look by giving it a cute (and comfortable) flutter sleeve.

As I shared in my last post, I’m going to be writing about some easy ways I’m being creative lately.

If you’re familiar with my blog, you’ll know that my chronic health conditions including Dysautonomia and extreme fatigue (ME/CFS) often derail my plans to be creative. I noticed in a post I mentioned planning to do some refashions almost two years ago! I’m glad I’m getting around to it.

I have this jersey knit dress that I absolutely love. I call it my Disney princess dress because the color blocking reminds me of the more casual dresses some Disney princesses wear. I’m specifically thinking of Ariel’s tour of the kingdom dress, or Aurora’s wandering around the forest outfit. (Yes I’m a huge Disney fan, whether I’m Disneybouding or altering coloring book pages.)

But the jersey knit fabric got stretched out, and the bodice looked sloppy. I realized the cuffed sleeves were making the problem worse by pulling the bodice out to the sides and giving me bat wings. Not the look I was going for.

Originally, I was going to make the sleeves into cap sleeves, by reattaching the cuffs at an angle and higher up. My hope was this would fix the awkward lose fit in the bodice. I was really hoping not to have to alter the dress itself.

Once the cuffs were removed, however, I saw the possibility for a cute flutter sleeve, Without the cuffs, the dress was much more comfortable, and the stretched out bodice fabric fell nicely when the sleeves weren’t pulling it out the sides any longer.

It was an easy fix to fold the edges of the sleeves over twice and then top stitch them. (Thanks to my mom for finishing this part—all the seam ripping had left me lightheaded and I was worn out.)

Ta da! I really love how the flutter sleeves turned out.