construction -- sleeve appliques

After I had the sleeves pleated, I figured that it would be easiest to apply the sleeve stripes before I sewed the sleeve into a tube.

I implemented my first plan:

1) interface appliques with silk organza


2) hand sew gold braid onto right side of velvet (I quickly learned that I should avoid machine sewing the velvet as much as possible)
3) clip braid
4) turn and -- ta da! one applique ready




Unfortunately, this resulted in very messy looking appliques:



Frustrated, I took myself back to the fabric store to look for inspiration for a new plan of attack. I found some gold silk duiponi and I decided that what I needed to do was create two appliques and sew the velvet applique onto a gold, piped background. I increased the original trim template by 5/8" on all sides and cut that out of the gold silk.


I placed some cording at the seam allowance and folded the silk over the cording to create the piping effect on the background applique:


I then turned the edged of the velvet appliques under by hand and whip-stitched them onto the gold. This made for a much better looking trim:


I remade all of the trim appliques and pinned them into place on the sleeves:


I was able to sew these to the sleeves by simply topstitching in the "ditch" right next to the piping:


I then sewed up the sleeve seams and they were ready to attach to the yoke!