Learning about sleeves

If Psy Chi is going to be a proper movement I think it needs some trappings. In particular, I think we need robes. Big, long flowing robes in bright colours. Now of course I know absolutely nothing about making clothes, so I made a bunch of fairly sweeping assumptions about what was possible, most of which have turned out to be false. Oh well.

I wanted to keep things as simple as possible, so I was hoping to be able to cut the entire robe out of a single piece of material, including the sleeves. The voice of greater textile experience in the form of Katie suggested that this was a daft idea and that sleeves just don't work like this, but naturally I was convinced I was right and that it would work, albeit in a slightly sketchy fashion. We sat out in the sun in the garden and folded the material over twice, once to give a front and a back, and once to allow me to mirror the left and right sides.  A bit of sketching with a pencil and then we cut out the neck hole, the basic shape of the body, and the first stab at the sleeves.

Well, it turns out that experience triumphed over hope in this case. The sleeves were much too narrow at the shoulder/armpit and there was no way we'd be able to stitch them up and still be able to put the thing on, let alone move. Looks like the first robe is going to be a sleeveless one.

Undaunted, for the second attempt I make the opening of the sleeve much larger. To try and compensate for the resulting limitation on the length of the sleeve, I cut a curving sleeve shape. Oops. Total failure to comprehend the relationship between 2d fabric and 3d shape. Unless I develop freaky elbows that poke out 6 inches behind my arm this one is also going to be sleeveless. And I'm forced to accept that Katie was right and sleeves need to be made separately. Since there's only a day and a half left I suspect that we may well end up being sleeveless all round. Probably not a bad thing in practice, since it'll be cooler and allow more freedom of movement for all the Psy Chi Forms!

We're going to have a go at colouring them tomorrow with some sun-reactive dyes and a few stencils... watch this space.