welcome to so you know I'm Russell Conti with sewing arts center today I'd like to show you how to sew in a sleeve on a shirt I'll show you a couple of really quick and easy techniques to make it flawless the first time you ready let's get to it forest leaf technique you're gonna need your two sleeves of course I want to show you two different techniques for installing the sleeves you'll need your shirt put together a shirt front two shirt back and you might recall from one of our previous videos that I showed you how to install the yoke you'll want good quality thread again my go-to thread is cotton good shears to cut out your pattern of course good quality pins and a size 70 sharp needle for this particular project the first part of our sewing we want to run a long stitch from one notch across the shoulder to the other set of notches and we do that with the longest ditch the machine will make it's either referred to as a gathering stitch or an ease stitch and the reason that is is because when you install a sleeve convention has it that the cap of the sleeve has more fabric in it than the armhole will have on the garment and so we need to gather this in just a little bit in order to fit successfully when you start make sure you leave long thread tails at the very end of the garment so that when you gather the fabric up the threads don't pull out of the stitch we also want to increase our stitch length to the maximum the machine will make on this particular machine that means five millimeters so I'm going to start right here and instructions typically will tell you to run the gathering stitch or the easing stitch right on the seam line I however like this so that the easing stitch ever-so-slightly outside of it toward the edge of the garment or inside of it toward the sleeve so that it's easier to pull out because this is just a temporary stitch in order to help gather up the fabric now the cool part of this technique is simply to place your finger behind the foot as the fabric is sewing this is called ease plussing if you hold your finger behind the foot you'll notice that fabric starts to gather up on the foot and behind it and onto your finger and then it will continue going until it can't go any further and then just release it and what will happen is the fabric will pucker ever so slightly if you find that it's not puckering very much in my case it's not you want to increase your thread tension a little bit and that tends to scare people however your thread tension mechanism is typically on the top of the machine and standard thread tension is somewhere between four and six the higher the number the higher the thread tension so in this case I'm gonna run it up to about seven to see that helps and gather up those stitches a little bit more still holding my finger behind the foot letting the fabric gather up behind there and stopping at my other set of notches raise the needle up take the fabric off of the machine and again leave long thread tails and you'll notice by virtue of having adjusted my thread tension higher that the fabric actually gathers and puckers a little bit more and so it pulls and rounds the cap so we didn't have it occur over here so what we'll need to do in that case is simply grab one of the threads and tug on it a little bit just to help gather that up and when you gather it you want to make certain that you gather it so that it's consistent across the cap that keeps you from getting any puckers an inset sleeve actually has a sleeve sewn entirely before it's installed in the garment the find is traditionally on jackets but you can also do it on a shirt my seam allowance is a quarter of an inch so I'm going to set the machine to 1/4 inch from the edge of the foot and I'm gonna set my stitch length to the appropriate stitch length for this way to fabric in this case two millimeters start at the edge of course sew forward a few stitches and sew backwards to anchor that stitch and closed our scene so we've enclosed the one sleeve we sewed up the side seam here we've gathered across the top to ease the cap we also want to sew the side seam on the garment to create the inset for the sleeve again my seam allowance is 1/4 of an inch forward and backward to anchor and so your side seam and if there's ever any question about how to pressure seam allowance convention has it that we press the seam allowances toward the front of the garment what you want to do is take your sleeve and turn it face out you want your garment face in the first step is simply to match up the lower seam on a sleeve the side seam on the shoulder on the garment get those in place first that'll make your life easier so that the right sides are facing and will pin at the bottom if you have any question at all your seam allowances on both the sleeve and the shirt are gonna press toward the front of the garment now that we've matched at the bottom we can go ahead and find the shoulder seam there's a notch up there to indicate it and there's also a notch in my case right above the yoke side seam here we've got our two notches on the back of the garment we have two notches at the back of the sleeve if you notice when you replace in the sleeve and that you only had one notch on the sleeve that would mean you were putting in the wrong sleeved you need to use the other sleeve because one notch always indicates the front of the piece two notches indicates the back will match up our other notch over here and pin that into place so from the bottom seam allowance to the notch point it'll be a one to one ratio we'll go and pin that in place I tend to go to the center and then put as many pins as I need to in between same thing on this side there'll be no ease from the knotch to the lower seem find the center match up your seam allowances and pin now that we have that portion taken into consideration and in place we can now pin the top of the sleeve cap so find the center between the shoulder seam and the notch point and pin there make certain the balance of the fabric is eased in so that it's consistent across there you want to be equal and in my case I've got a lot of pins in here but I'm pinning about every inch or so do the same thing on the other side pin in between and pin in between once again we're ready for sewing we'll start at the base where the seam allowances are and again we want our seam allowances pressed toward the front of the garment and just ride that up on either sewing machine my seam allowance is 1/4 of an inch and again most garment construction seam allowances you'll find are at five-eighths so be mindful of that make sure it's you are following a attention to the garment that you're constructing and now we'll sew again it's a one to one ratio as we come across the bottom until we get to the first notch I want to make sure that my seam allowances match up so I have a tidy finish and we're at our first knotch again as before just make sure there's no puckering underneath the fabric or in write it in front of the needle if that's the case then you're going to be safe just continue sewing if you feel anything at all check it out look for it make sure that there's no fabric that's getting captured that shouldn't be captured and continue sewing overlap backstitch take it off the machine check our work to see if we see any this is our gathering stitch or our easing stitch that we did we call the ease plussing I'm checking all the way around to make sure that there is no puckering before I decide I'm free to go we'll check the other side as well and everything looks good so go and turn right side out to check our work and to applaud ourselves for the fine job we did we're free to pull the basting stitch out and to continue on our way at this point I would do some seam finish on the inside of a garment in this case I'll probably use the overlock machine just to tidy it up you could use pinking shears you could use a three-step zigzag does it be effective finishes as well but you want to keep this from fraying over time thank you for joining us for this edition of so you know I'm Russell Conti with sewing arts center I hope the techniques you've learned today have inspired you to sew more and that that sleeve insertion technique you learned will make it that much easier for you to sew that shirt you've always been wanting to so if you'd like to contact us for any reason at all please feel free to do so it's so you know calm or sewing art center calm look forward to more videos coming very soon thanks