Last week in my Blog Post, I shared about the feminine, often silky, blouses that I’ve been seeing lately. Flounces were the ‘feminine’ element – so I shared with you my technique for easy designing of flounces. Now – what about how to HEM these flounces?
Woven Flounce Hemming
This is the challenge – as hemming anything circular is – well, a challenge. Of course, there’s rolled hem serging, but most often on top quality garments featuring flounces, I see nice, narrow hemming. Though it takes 3 ’rounds’ of stitching, and some careful cutting, the finest technique to accomplish a non-ripply, nice narrow hem on a circular edge consists of these steps:
Stitch about 1/2″ away from the edge, through a single layer of the fabric. Use a smaller stitch length than normal, and if working on a lightweight fabric, as these flounces on silky blouses would likely be, install a single-hole needle plate on your machine if you have one.
Press the raw edge to the wrong side, slightly rolling the stitching line to the wrong side so that you can just see it at the edge.
Stitch AGAIN, very closely, ON the fold, actually right over that first row of stitching. Not so hard…so far.
Trim the raw edge CAREFULLY very close to the last stitching. Use a small, very sharp scissors. I find keeping the work anchored under the presser foot as a ‘3rd hand’ works well to create the needed tension on the fabric.
Turn this narrow, stitched edge to the wrong side AGAIN, and, once again, stitch right over the previous stitching.
I actually searched quite a long time to find a YouTube Video showing this technique, with no luck. I’ve put it on my list for my next video filming session. If you have questions, or find a video with these steps shown – please comment below.
And, indeed, a customer offered this video that exactly shows the above technique! Though shown on a straight piece, it would work on the curve of a flounce!
Knit Flounce ‘Hemming’
For Flounces created of knit fabric – hemming is no problem! I like to make use of the fact that knits don’t ravel, so I’m happy with a cleanly cut edge accomplished with a rotary cutter. OR…also for knits, I really love the Wave Rotary Blade, as you see at the left below.
Please COMMENT below with your input or questions. I’d love to see pics of any garments you make featuring feminine flounces.
One more thing: I’m happy to share that I’ve been selected by Feedspot as one of the Top 200 Sewing Blogs on the web. You might want to check out those other 199 blogs at: https://ww.blog.feedspot.com/sewing_blogs/
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