Jersey Long Shrug with pleats and puffy sleeves

 

Summer is coming... we already hit Spring and some hot days, how I hate them!
 I don't really like showing my arms or shoulders, they get really sunburned when I walk home from college after midday :( (I get the burn feeling just thinking about it) and I don't like the idea of "patchy uneven tanned" arms.. actually I don't like the idea of being tanned at all but oh well, I can't always hide from the sun.

So for this season I've decided to sew myself some shrugs, I made sort of a long one on the weekend but I think next ones will be more like sleeves, I'm not that crazy to melt just because of my shoulders.

Anyways, this pic at Pinterest was my main inspiration:

                                                                                         Source: aliexpress.com via Melina on Pinterest

I really like that pleated neck, I'm not crazy about the puffy sleeves though, but still I wanted to use the cotton ribbon I accidentally dyed purple because it nicely matched with the jersey fabric I had, so I only pictured the ribbon in a sort of less puffier(?) balloon sleeve. So I started sketching, then making the pattern and sewing, and this is what I came out with:

There were some tiny lil mistakes in the finishing but I really like how it turned out, I think I'm going to repeat this pattern again.
I made my own based on a long and fitted top (edit: something like this pin on how to make your own pattern) I like and then I made the sleeves based on the top and back pattern, my pattern making knowledge was useful here. I gotta say, I got lucky with the pattern for the pleated neck, the long strip I cut was just right, wide and then narrow, just perfect.
 Thing about making pleats out of jersey fabric is that it needs to be ironed and pressed a lot, jersey is light and stretchy compared to the common fabrics used to make pleats. But they are holding still though, the neck doesn't most of the times but I don't mind.