Crochet sleeves

🧵 Work in progress

Greetings everyone, today I want to show you a pair of simple crocheted sleeves that I made a couple of weeks ago.

🪡 From Tunic to Standalone Piece

They were originally meant to be part of another medieval-style tunic (you can check my earlier post about the rectangle-based sweater/tunic). But when I started fitting the pieces on the mannequin, I realised the sleeves actually looked great on their own. So I decided to keep them as separate pieces and share how they looked before being stitched into a full garment.

✨ How to Wear Them

These kinds of sleeves are perfect if you like wearing lighter clothes, like tank tops, but still want to keep your arms warm — or just add something decorative. They can work as a unique addition to an everyday outfit, or as a more dramatic detail for medieval, steampunk, or fantasy-inspired looks.

🎨 Customisation Ideas

You can easily experiment with colours and textures, and add beads, sequins, ribbons — whatever fits your style. There’s a lot of room to make them your own.

🧶 Materials & Tips

For this project, I used Red Heart Bella acrylic yarn. If you prefer a lighter, more lacy version, cotton yarn would work really well.

To create the base of the sleeve, you can use any crocheted pentagon — just make sure it’s large enough to wrap comfortably around your arm. Sew the opposite edges together using a mattress stitch, then continue working in rounds to build up the length of the sleeve.

💭 Final thoughts

This isn’t a full step-by-step tutorial, just a few tips based on my project. The stitch patterns, structure and decorations are completely up to you.

Personally, I like simple geometric motifs and strong contrast, so I went with a black, white and blue colour combination.