How to use a Rolled Hem Foot

 

Sew pretty rolled hems on garments and ruffles with the rolled hem foot with your Baby Lock Sewing Machine (of course, this technique can be used as well with any sewing machine that offers the hemmer foot accessory)!

I used three different examples to show the different fabrics.

 First, when making rolled hems, you’ll need to iron up the bottom edge about a half inch, as show. (So, if you are hemming a dress (make sure you practice several times before actually performing on a garment), you’ll want to leave about 3/4″ for your hem allowance, still iron up the bottom edge a half inch (the next step rolls it up about a 1/4″ more. If your hemming a chiffon dress, I’d leave about an 1″ hem allowance because chiffon likes to do it’s own thing, so, it’s nice when you always have extra)).

Trim down your ironed-up edge to about an 1/8″ as shown in the next 2 pictures…

These small ridges give you enough thickness to keep it rolled over nicely when passing the fabric through the foot.

Make sure you rolled hem foot is on and your needle is in the center (I also like to change my stitch length to 3.0mm). Hold the top with your left hand and your right hand should be about 3″ down.

Place under the foot…

Pull the fabric in front up and in to the foot making sure that the ironed-edge stays rolled over.

It’s difficult to stitch the beginning (but, scroll further down to the chiffon fabric and I’ll give you some tips on doing this), but, when you are sewing a hem because your sewing around a circle rather than a straight line as shown for practice. Ok, so, now, make sure, you still hold the fabric behind the foot with your left hand and the fabric in front continually needs to be rolled over between your thumb and fore finger…continually have slight tension on the fabric so that it doesn’t roll to much or too little in…(it just takes some practice sometimes)!

Don’t hold the fabric like how it’s shown below, constantly roll it over…

Keep rolling it in, how it’s shown below…

Pretty underside of the hem!

Ok, if you’d like to sew from the very beginning, fold the ironed edge over again (so, it’s rolled up twice), hold about and inch or so down and place under the foot keeping just the beginning of the fabric rolled twice.

 

Put your needle down into the top where it’s folded twice…

Then, insert your fabric up and in to the foot again as shown earlier (and below).

 

Under side…

Top side…

 Note: If you are hemming a garment with the hemmer foot (make sure the fabric isn’t too terrible thick or stretchy), after you cut off the excess fabric (leaving a 3/4″ – 1″ hem allowance, reinforce the bottom of all of the seams you just cut off so they don’t come undone when trying to use the hemmer foot. Then, I trim those seam allowances down to about an 1/8″ in the hem allowance only so that they’ll pass through the hemmer foot (sometimes, if your seams are too thick, with the needle down in the rolled hem before coming to your seam, take rolled seam out of the foot and flatten it down to go over the seam and then insert your fabric back into the foot) Seams can be tricky! Hopefully that makes sense! Practice, don’t get frustrated!