Rolled Hems

Rolled hems are fiddly.

Every time I’ve done a rolled hem, I fight with the sewing machine and wind up messing up at least one small part of the hem. The eldest Brady boy’s girlfriend asked me to hem her prom dress, and I wanted to make sure I got it right. I have a few rolled hem presser feet and tried all of them on the scraps of what I had cut off of the dress, and I isolated my problems to two areas. First, starting in the round - getting the rolled hem to start neatly is not easy. Second, seams. Anytime you need to cross a seam with a rolled hem foot, brace yourself because if you don’t grade the seam at all, it will get caught, and you will want to cry. So I read a bunch of tutorials and watched videos trying to figure out how to solve for my two problems with this process.

In my defense, I’m clearly not the only one with these struggles. Below is the worst of the original seams to demonstrate how easily the rolled hem can get all jacked up crossing a seam:

Wrong side

Right side

I came across this post from Grainline Studio and decided to give it a try. Most notably, this technique gives a big middle finger to the rolled hem foot altogether and I’m so here for that.

With this technique, you run a regular straight stitch (single layer, not folded) and then fold it up along that line of stitching. The fabric will naturally want to fold along that stitching line, so it makes it a lot easier. Secure with a second stitch, trim the seam allowance, and then fold it up again for the final stitch.

Run a straight stitch along the raw edge to be hemmed

Fold it toward the wrong side and sew it down, following the original stitch line

Press and trim the excess seam allowance

Turn up the hem again toward the wrong side and stitch

Voila! A nice rolled hem with no F-bombs!

Worked. Like. A. Charm.

Yes, it takes longer. Instead of one pass (screaming fuck at each seam) and a jacked up starting point, you’re making three passes. For me, however, the results were much better. I didn’t wind up with the weird twistiness that inevitably happens to me when using the rolled hem foot along a curved hem. This dress has a lot of flow to it, it’s a large circle skirt with a lining, so running three passes on both layers takes much longer, but it looks better than the original rolled hem, especially at the seams!