Puff-sleeve flashback tee + tutorial

Want an easy way to "girl up" your Flashback Tees? How about a puff sleeve? It's so easy, it's crazy. Here's what I'm talking about:

(she's wearing a basic rectangle skirt that we sewed together, by the way...I put the elastic in and did all the pressing, but she sewed the side seam, the elastic casing, and the hem, with my help of course. It's a nice quick project to sew with your kid!)

I made this tee with my Flashback Skinny Tee pattern but you can do this with any sleeve really. Here's a quick how-to:

First, cut your sleeve pieces, but move the sleeve pattern piece at least 1" away from the fold, keeping the edge parallel to the fold (this will add 2" to your sleeve width, because the fold doubles everything).

If you don't want your sleeve to have 2" added to the entire width, tilt the pattern pieces so that the top of the sleeve is 1" away from the fold, and keep the bottom of the sleeve right at the fold.
If the sleeve pattern piece is full-width rather than a half pattern piece like the one shown, just fold the sleeve pattern piece in half to create an edge to place along the fold.

Gather the top of the sleeves. I use a long stitch length and high tension on my machine, and I sew about 1/4" away from the edge. I usually cheat and do just one row of stitches. One other thing: you know how the top of a sleeve kind of looks like a hill? I only stitch along the "top of the hill," not the entire curved top edge of the sleeve. If you want to get technical: I only gather the top of the sleeve where it's convex, not where it's concave.

Pin and sew the sleeve to the armhole.

Repeat for the other sleeve. Then sew the side seams and finish up the hems!

A couple other things. First, you can do this with long sleeves too!

Second, if you don't like how wide the sleeve is at the bottom, you can sew an elastic casing or a line of elastic shirring at the bottom of the sleeve to gather it, like I did with this top (can't wait to show you more of this top!!):