How to fix a too short sleeve.

I believe many people besides me has had this annoying situation. One has found a beautiful coat at the second hand shop or the local charity shop, or got a used item from a friend. The coat fits otherwise perfectly, BUT the sleeves are tiny bit too short. There is also no way to extend the original fabric.

I once found a leather jacket for 5 euros and its sleeves were about 4 cm too short, leaving my wrist totally exposed to this cold climate. So, I decided to make arm warmers that could be used with that particular coat but also with other occasions too. I did not have a sewing machine so they really are totally handmade. At that time I was more active about LARPing, and that’s why the stitching is made so “rough”. It was perfect for a little Celtic fantasy game I attended.

Basically I just went and bought the fake fur, I asked for a kind I could work by hands and I already had that white fabric. Then I just made two tubes, inside white and outside black fake fur, that came just a bit over from the ends of the tubes.

They are very nice, one can just make them as tiny as possible and put the on, sleeve insidethe tube, or if it is the coat, then tube is under the sleeve, fur side to the skin and the part that comes out of the sleeve is just turned over and there is a nice little fur collar, warming one’s fingers. One tube can be also used as a muff. That fake fur is not that thick, so One can attach some lovely gothic jewellery to them. Like if it is a muff, then at the middle some huge golden or sivery symbol.

Close-up of the stitching.