This tutorial is for all of you on a quest to customize me-made or upcycled garments. The garments’ sleeves sometimes need to be shortened or lengthened, and you want that alteration to look professional while giving the wearer a tailor-made fit. I’ll walk you through the steps to shorten jacket sleeves below. My next post (coming February 12, 2021) provides the steps required to lengthen a jacket’s sleeves.

This technique for shortening sleeves can be applied to ladies’ and men’s jackets that have nonworking vents near the sleeve hems. Nonworking vents include sewn-on buttons. Some also have nonworking buttonholes with the buttons sewn on top. The buttonholes are just for show, since they have not been cut open.

An alterations shop method

While working at a menswear store in the 1980s, I learned how to shorten and lengthen sleeves on jackets with nonworking vents and buttons. That job gave…