How To Shorten Shirt Sleeves

If you live with someone who insists on short sleeves all year round, you might relate to this. My partner happily wears short sleeves even in the middle of winter; he just finds them more comfortable under jumpers and overall just gets much more wear out of his shirts that way. So I have been shortening the sleeves on a few more of his shirts recently and thought I would share how I do it.

I popped a short video on YouTube today demonstrating the process I follow and I wanted to expand on that here with a mini tutorial. This post walks you through my procedure step by step, so you can confidently shorten shirt sleeves without it turning into a bigger alteration than it needs to be.

Shirt Sleeve Alteration - Step By Step:

• Firstly decide on the new sleeve length by measuring with a tape measure or by comparing them to an existing shirt that you or your partner / friend likes. I tend to make my partner's short sleeves about 9.25 / 9.5 inches long which seems to work well.

  
  

• You could also just take a look at the pattern repeat on the shirt and decide where you want the short sleeved hem to sit. I find it looks nice if you plan to end the hem on a specific line of the pattern and make sure its the same line on both sleeves for a symmetrical look. Once I have identified where the hem will finish, I then add on about 0.75 inches for a hem allowance.

  
  

• I then roughly cut the bottom of the sleeve off completely under this point and then more carefully cut through the line I had identified.

  
  

• I then move over to the ironing board and turn the shirt inside out.

  
  

• With my seam gauge at the ready, I turn the raw edge of the sleeve under to the wrong side by a quarter of an inch and then turn it again by half an inch and press it well with the iron.

  
  

• I pin the hem in place and then sew around the edge of the top fold (the one closest to the shoulder) approximately one eighth of an inch from the edge of the fold. You could decide to do a second line of stitching if you like - depends on how you would like the finished sleeve to look and also how much time you have!

  
  

• Repeat that process on the other sleeve and you're done.

It's a good feeling to be able to rescue something from the depths of someone's wardrobe and give it a new life and this quick and simple alteration does just that.

Let me know if you have done this or if you have any other tips for shirt alterations.

Thanks for reading!