Step One Baste your two small sleeve triangles (see item 5 on layout page) to the tops of one sleeve. As long as your triangles are similar in ratio to your sleeve as is shown at right, you are okay.

Baste the sleeve together, starting with your small triangles and ending at the black line. This is where your button placket will begin.

Baste the sleeve into the armscye of your kirtle body. You might find that your need to do one of the following:

• Use only one triangle
• Use a third triangle
• Slighty adjust the size of one or both triangles

There is no right way to make these triangles and evidence shows that they used as many as 7 triangles to fit a sleeve into the armscye of a garment.

Note: The only evidence to date for bound seams is from the cloak thought to have belonged to St. Birgitta. The garment as been altered over the centuries and perhaps the bound seams are not from the 14th century. I have found, however, the binding the sleeve seam in this manner finishes the seams nicely and reduced the bulk of a french seam. You may of course omit the strip and either leave the seam raw if wool (not recommended for linen or other fabrics that ravel) or sew a french seam. You may also finish as some of the gowns in the Greenland finds are finished and card weave along the sewn edge.

Step Four Attach the buttons that you either made or purchased. To learn how to make your own buttons see the button demo.

These are images of the final placket, from inside and outside