Puffed Paper Sleeves - An Anne of Green Gables Craft

I'm still reading L.M. Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables, out loud to the children this week. They've become quite familiar with Anne's love of puffed sleeves. So, for our stART (story + art) project, I decided to let the little ones decorate some puffed sleeves of their own. We made ours out of paper, so the girls could draw on flowers, and hearts, and the like.

After, Googling "how to make puffed sleeves", and getting the basic concept of the shape, I drew out a sort of arch, with a cuff, on two pieces of scrap paper, taped together (you can almost see it in the picture below).

Once I had cut out the basic shape, I added a few slits, so the puff of the sleeve could be gathered together, and stapled. It's not quite the same as gathering fabric sleeves, but the youngest girls didn't know the the difference, and the older girls, who know full well they have dresses hanging in their closest, with perfectly good puffed sleeves already attached, thought the whole thing was silly anyway (not very Anneish of them at all!).

Before, we stapled the sleeves, the younger girls, with some eventual help form their older sisters, made them pretty.

Then, we stapled the gathered top part, set them on the girls' shoulders, and taped the cuffs around their arms.

They looked a little strange, with puffed, paper sleeves over their outfits, but just like Anne, they imagined they were wearing beautiful white dresses, with the puffed sleeves sewn on.

I tried to get a clear shot of them together, in their sleeves, but they wouldn't stop twirling long enough for me to snap a picture.

For more story stretching arts, and crafts activities for children, check out this weeks stART link up at A Mommy's Adventures.

Or, for more about Anne of Green Gables, or the other works of L.M. Montgomery, take a look at the L.M. Montgomery Reading Challenge, at Reading to Know, where participants are providing links, in the comments, to their reviews of Montgomery's books.

It's great to be a homeschooler.