Sad, but true, I am still in love with light-weight water resistant coats for farm chores in our wet climate. There is a local shop that sells coats with all natural fabrics and waterproofing, but I've met the one my friend owns and it's way too heavy for my small frame. Similarly, I know some people wear wool, but I also don't give off much heat and where others would generate enough heat to keep dry, I simply get soggy and frozen and then hurt.
So I compromise by buying second hand coats to at least delay their arrival in the landfill.
The one I bought recently, was a men's coat and the sleeves were simply waaaayyyyy..... too long for me. I was patient with myself, knowing that given time, I would get a bright idea about the easiest way to shorten the sleeves.
I didn't want to simply chop them shorter, make a casing and put elastic in it. I don't find that as comfortable for working in as a real cuff.
I also didn't really want to try to take the whole cuff apart and hope I could get it back together. That seemed like a big risk and a lot of fiddly sewing.
Then I got the idea of cutting the sleeve off about 1 1/2 inches above the cuff. This gave me enough fabric to rejoin the cuff to the coat sleeve with just simple seams.
This first picture shows the sleeve/cuff cut off, pinning stage one, and the white fabric is how much sleeve I cut off:
Here's a picture of the first sleeve completed:
I am *really* pleased with how well this worked. It's not that obvious, and certainly good enough for a farm coat. I won't know until the wet weather hits whether it will tend to leak where that extra seam is, but I'll cross that road when I get to it.
There was an added complication that the sleeves were lined, but the stitching there is inside the sleeve, so I just had to make it secure - not pretty!
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