In my last post, I discussed two ways that you can make a narrow or rolled hem on a sewing machine. Both of those hems use a narrow or rolled hem foot. In case you don’t have that foot, I wanted to share a few more ways to get basically the same look.
Rolled Hem #3:
You will need a special purpose/satin stitch foot or other foot that has a notch on the bottom. The purpose of that notch is to allow the rolled edge to go under the foot. Otherwise, it would get caught on the foot, and your stitches would not look pretty. I am using the special purpose foot that I use for all satin stitching (a tight zig-zag stitch).
Most of my sewing books claim that you can fake a rolled edge on a sewing machine by simply running a fine, zig-zag stitch along the edge. I have managed to do this on some fabric using wooly nylon in the needle and the bobbin, but I was not able to replicate that technique on bias-cut, quilting cotton. This is the closest I got. This edge was done with an tear-away interfacing on the back and with wooly nylon thread in the bobbin.
In case you can’t see, this “rolled hem” has about a hundred threads showing between the zig-zags. If this look works for you, then use it! I prefer my rolled edges to look a little cleaner. You should still try this look out on your machine because it is possible that your machine likes this stitch better than mine.
Rolled Hem #4:
If you like the clean edge look of a rolled hem and you do not have a serger or narrow/rolled hem foot, you can still get close to the same look. You will be doing all the work manually so it will look as nice as you make it. Do you feel warned now?
Once again, I am using my special purpose foot, and I still have wooly nylon in my bobbin.
Step 1: Turn under edge 1/4″ of your fabric and iron.
Step 2: Carefully tuck in raw edge (cut edge of fabric) so that it touches the 1/4″ fold line. Iron in place. You should only have 1/8″ of fabric showing. No raw edges will be showing.
Step 3: Using a wide stitch width and a fine stitch length, zig-zag along outer fold of fabric. I was not able to catch all of my fabric in the rolled edge, but I was also not super careful with folding the fabric. If you can fold the fabric tighter, you will have a cleaner finished product. The front (not shown) looks much cleaner than my rolled hem #3.
