Welcome to Closet Core Adaptive Sewing Modifications week three with guest writer, Sophie Hines! To see all the other posts in this series.
This week, we’re exploring seated and adaptive modifications for shirts and tops, as well as tips to inform your selection when you’re shopping for a new pattern. If you’re a wheelchair user or remain seated for much of the time and are looking for better-fitting tops, these adaptations may help your garments last longer and work harder for you!
The best way to design seated garments is to consider how the body moves and create a piece that accommodates those movements. You’re not just designing for a still, upright dress form - you’re creating a functional garment that allows the wearer to use specialized equipment and prevents discomfort from repetitive motions. You’re designing sportswear for endurance athletes! Thinking about the utility and including adaptive design details makes for a high-quality, beautiful garment.
Range of Motion
Think about the motions you take when self-propelling a manual wheelchair - for every push, you bend your arms behind you, push down on the wheel, and through an arc to end with your arms in front of you. That’s a lot of motion! You’ll want to consider tops that have room in the shoulders and across the front of the chest, don’t pull when your arms are moved, and don’t provide a lot of friction under your arms.
You may want to try adding a panel of material that is more friction-resistant to the area under your arms and the underside of your sleeves, to increase the longevity of your garments. This is called a two-piece sleeve, and they are frequently featured in jacket patterns to eliminate bulky seams under the arm or introduce less delicate material in a high-friction zone. But you can use the same design lines to increase functionality for any garment!
Adding elbow patches is another way to add some durability to the underside of a sleeve. Bonus tip: you'll look like a tenured professor!
Sleeve Suggestions
For sleeves, we’ve got a lot of the same fit challenges! You’ll want to avoid long, voluminous sleeves, to keep your grip firm on your push rims, and avoid entanglement incidents. Many wheelchair users opt to crop to a bracelet or three-quarter length to keep their sleeves out of the way. You may also consider a button and tab to add the option to keep rolled sleeves up, and let them down when they’re wanted again.
But here’s a fun thing about sleeves! When you’re in the seated position, your elbows are much more likely to be bent than held straight - whether they’re resting on armrests, working at a desk, pushing your wheelchair, etc. You know what happens to your sleeves when your elbow is bent - extra material bunches up inside your elbow, while on the back of the sleeve, your joint presses the material and creates a hole over time. This is why we so frequently patch elbows and knees. The Jo Jumpsuit and Dress is a fantastic sleeve that uses volume on the upper arm and elbow area to easily and skillfully accommodate a bent elbow. And it’s a shortened sleeve with a narrow skirt - match made in heaven??
To keep these holes from happening and make the garment much more comfortable to wear, you want to shorten the length of the garment on the side that gets bunched and increase the length on the side that receives pressure. The easiest way to create and join disparate lengths is by adding darts or creative seaming! Accommodating the elbow bend is a design challenge that has been addressed as long as people have been making clothing - before stretch materials, this challenge had to be addressed wholly through fabric and pattern manipulation. There are even Adaptive Clothing Researchers who focus entirely on the sleeve! You can look at garments from any period in history and learn new ways to change and adapt your sleeves.
Reducing Volume
Length and volume around your lap can create many of the same issues, and the solution is the same for both- reduce the amount of material! Shortening, slimming, or both will solve a lot of the issues that are presented by tops and shirts.
Lots of volume in a shirt becomes quickly overwhelming when it’s all twisting and folding around you, and can change the way you sit in your chair or affect your posture if you have a lot of material bunched behind or underneath you. If you’re in bed a lot, loose garments can get tangled in with your blankets and may cause a strain if you’re trying to untangle yourself quickly. It sounds dramatic, but wheelchair users are very prone to shoulder injuries- and lifting and untangling blankets with a bad shoulder is tough! Planning ahead with clothing that will adapt to the dynamic nature of disability is a step towards independence and injury prevention. Your garments don’t need to be tight, but opting for a closer fit will help you move more easily, feel less constrained, and work with you, whatever your health.
If you like a voluminous top, play around with keeping volume cropped or just in the front, and tapering the fit around the sides to allow freedom of movement at your sides.
Reducing Length
Length in your tops is an equally important aspect to consider as a wheelchair user. Too long, and your garment will bunch in your lap and under your arms, which is inconvenient when you need your lap to help you carry things, and your arms to propel your wheelchair. Excess material behind you can also prevent you from utilizing the support of your cushion and backrest correctly. But the biggest aggravation is the wheels- too long and your top will drag in your wheels, and keep you from propelling easily. You’ll see a lot of wheelchair users with cropped-length tops that end right at their laps. And don’t forget about the back! Try a scooped hem- shorter in the front, and longer in the back, to cover you when you lean forward.
The Kalle Shirt Dress is a literal match made in heaven for a wheelchair user- shorter in the front, long in the back, and a gorgeous scoop at the sides to keep the shirt or dress from falling into your wheels!
Jackets & Coats
But hark! Don’t go cutting the fronts of all your tops yet; it’s the opposite for jackets! Because you’re sitting down when you’re outside, you’ll want to cover your lap and knees, keeping them from collecting rain and moisture, and remove a portion under your seat to remove bulk. Adaptive Sewist Lolie Yergeau modified this gorgeous Clare Coat for wheelchair compatibility by adding a deep vent in the back to allow the coat to spread and drape over her knees.
Her Pixi Coat by Twig and Tale received an angled cutout across the back to leave length over her lap and hug her sides smoothly. Gorgeous work!
Closures on Tops
A quick circle back to our post on Adaptive Closures! When you’re designing a seated top, you may want to rethink traditional closures and where they’re located. Side zippers are going to create a lot of friction on one side of the body - if you have fragile skin or are very active, this could create undesirable issues. At the same time, a zipper or decorative buttons on the back of a garment may be uncomfortable when you’re continually seated.
Or you may need to include extra openings! There are tubes, pumps, patches, bags, or ports to accommodate and access. Consider the needs and situations where the garment will be worn, and make your clothes to suit what’s best for the wearer. Comfort, consideration of needs, and a thoughtful design are truly the best things you can offer yourself or a loved one, and if no one’s told you today, you deserve all three.
Let us know in the comments if you have any modifications that have worked for you!
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thank you, thank you for these hacks! It sucks having invisible diseases (mine are MS and elilepsy).
Bad enough adding mobility aids; worse to try to find stylish clothes to fit. As a garment maker of years I’m keen to try your modifications. Hopefully I’ll have people asking again where I bought my … and being able to say I made it myself🎉