How to Sew Stripes onto a Sleeve

In this post I’m going to show you how to sew stripes around the sleeve of a cardigan. Of course, this method can also be used on shirts, pullovers, and jackets.

What it involves: Hand Sewing, Cutting, Measuring, Pinning

Level: Beginner

The Story Behind This

My son has style adventures. For years now he has only wanted clothes from Thrift Stores or Walmart and would find the strangest items and put them together.

Then he discovered that not only can clothing be altered to be something else but that his mom has the skills to make his vision come true. (I don’t always but how sweet he thinks so.)

His newest Mom-Is-It-Possible-To request is far more understated (he is getting older) and is inspired by high-end fashion. Something which I’m surprised even caught his eye.

“Mom is it possible to take my grey sweater and make this.”

“Uhh… no. Your Target sweater will not look like that. No matter what I do.”

Turns out he just wanted the stripes added to the left sleeve. Which, can be done, I told him, but they will not be knitted into the sleeve. “It’s not going to look as polished as that.”

That’s okay, he said because sometimes you want your clothes to be something no one else can just buy. Sometimes you embrace, head-on, that independent, DIY style. And this is one of those projects.

Supplies you will need:

• The shirt or jacket you are sewing the stripe or stripes onto
• Fabric to cut the stripes from. More on this in a sec.
• Iron
• Scissors & Pins
• Thread to match the stripe fabric and thread to match the garment fabric if there is a big difference (like white stripes on a dark shirt)
• Hand sewing needle. The smallest needle thick enough to go through your fabrics. Heavier fabrics require thicker needles but you don’t want to use a harpoon either – so, The smallest needle which will go through your heaviest fabric with ease.

Can you use any fabric for the stripes? Yes, you can. However, for best results pay attention to the weight and the type of fabric. A fabric that is similar or lighter in weight as the garment will allow the sleeve to hang and move the way it was meant to.

There are two main types of fabric; woven and knit. Try to keep like with like here for movement and stretch. Woven fabric is made from threads woven together. Denim, flannel, button-down shirts are woven fabric. Knitted fabric is made from knitting (on tiny needles) a thread into fabric. T-shirts, sweaters, sweatpants are knit fabric.

I am sewing stripes onto a knitted cardigan so I’m going to use a T-shirt for the stripes. (And one without a side seam so I can get long strips from it)

The How-To

By laying strips of paper on the sleeve you can easily see how it will look when you’re done. Here you can play with how many stripes you want, how wide they will be and how much space between them.

Lay the stripes so they are perpendicular to the fold in the sleeve.

Measure the distance between each stripe and how wide you decided to make the final stripes (and write this down). Also, take note how far up the sleeve you’ve placed them.

Measure the sleeve at its widest point in the area you are sewing on (Usually where the sleeve joins the body is the widest part of the sleeve)

Now remember the sleeve is folded in half here so you will double this number for the length you need to cut the stripes (plus some for overlapping)

Iron the fabric you’ve picked for the stripes and cut.

You want to cut across the knit if you can. You need to cut across the knit if you need the sleeve to stretch at all when taking the garment on or off. Knits have more stretch and recovery side-to-side.

If you are unsure if you’re about to cut across or with, simply stretch your knit in both directions. Which way has the most stretch? That’s the cross direction. Cut going in the direction with the most stretch. If your fabric stretches equally in both directions, that’s a performance knit (for activewear & swimwear). I’d still cut across but it probably won’t matter.

You will need to cut the fabric 1/2″ wider and 1″ longer than the finished stripes will be. This gives you enough fabric to fold the cut edges over and leave your stripes looking clean.

Example: I want my stripes to be 1″ wide. The widest part of the sleeve where the stripes will be is 6 3/4″ wide when the sleeve is folded – so 13 1/2″ long. I will cut all 3 strips 1 1/2″ wide and 15″ long. I could cut them 14 1/2″ long but I had the 15″ so I gave myself some extra wiggle room, just in case.

You could, with a t-shirt knit, cut the strips to the exact width (Still cut them a little longer than you need) and leave the edges raw. This will look more disheveled (or Deconstructed) and that may be what you are after. You get to choose. You’re the designer here.

Optional: Finish off the edges of your strips with a serger, overcast stitch (some sewing machines have this), or a zig-zag stitch. If you make this stitch 1/4″ wide it will help you to easily fold over the long edges 1/4″ in the next step.

Why optional? Because the knit won’t unravel and sometimes sewing off the edge like that is more of a pain than it’s worth doing.

So You Know:
Knit fabric has a front and a back and they do not look the same. T-shirt knit is constructed with the same knit stitch that makes a sweater just a lot smaller. On the front side, you can see the diagonal slant of the threads. On the back, the threads are more horizontal.

Does This Matter?
For this project, not really but you probably want all of your stripes to be the same.

When you pull gently on your strips of knit fabric the long edges will curl to one side. (If your short edges curl you’ve cut the knit lengthwise not across. Read above about that.)

The edge knit curls to is the front side.

Fold over both long edges 1/4″ to one side and press flat with an iron. Remember we cut the strips 1/2″ wider than the stripe. Folding over 1/4″ on each edge will make my strip 1″ wide with clean, folded edges.

By pulling on the strip the edges curled up and almost folded themselves over. All I had to do was press. Of course, this meant I was folding the edge to the front side of the strip. It is rare you want the backside of a fabric showing but in a solid knit, I felt I could make this project a little easier and faster if I used the natural curl to my advantage.

See the difference in the stitches of the cardigan’s front side and my stripe’s backside? You can but it’s not a big difference at this scale. To me using the natural curl of the t-shirt fabric saved time and didn’t seem to impact the final look.

Press the sleeve if possible. Check the fiber content of your garment. Polyester and Nylon cannot handle super hot irons. Wool likes steam, cotton needs heat, and rayon/model uses a medium setting.

Lay the strip down on the sleeve where you want it. Make the strip perpendicular to the fold (far right in the photo above). Place the strip to have some overhang at the underarm seam.

Start pining the stripe down to the sleeve but not through both layers of the sleeve. Leave about 2″ at the beginning and the end unpinned for now.

The ends of the stripe will overlap. Pin the end at the back of the sweater down and leave the other end loose.

Start sewing down the stripe at the pinned-down, short end.

I used thread that matched my sweater, not the stripe, and used a slip stitch. See how to make a slip stitch here.

Sew down one long edge.

When you are an inch away from the other short end either:
1. knot your thread and end the stitching on that side. Start stitching down the other side across from where you just stopped sewing.
OR 2. stop stitching down the edge, make a few short running stitches into the sweater (where no one will see once the stripe is sewn down) to get to the other side of the stripe and start sewing that side down an inch from the end.

After both long edges are sewn down come back to the loose short end. Fold a little back onto itself (as you did to the long edges) and pin it down so it overlaps the other end of the stripe.

If you have more than 1/2″ overlap go ahead and trim down the end to reduce bulk.

Options:
Go ahead and sew this end down (change thread to match)
OR sew the other stripes down up to this point and come back to sew all the short ends down. No advantage to either, just a personal workflow preference.

Sew the top short end down. Match the thread to the stripe this time. However, it is under your arm, if you can’t match, it won’t be that noticeable.

Give your stripes a good pressing and yourself three cheers. Hip-Hip-Hooray!

It’s not a $1000 plus sweater, even with stripes, but it is a one-of-a-kind sweater and that’s pretty cool.

I hope you have wonderful sewing adventures. If you have any questions about this project please let me know in the comments.