After my date with my serger (overlocker), this is the progress I’ve made with little miss’s dress.  I’m using a tutorial from WIldflowers and Whimsy and it’s such a pretty dress, don’t you think?  The fabric though I’m using is a bit more tricky to sew with.  It’s a linen blend (possibly rayon?) of some sort that I picked up for $2 per metre.  It’s slippery and frays too easily for my liking.  But soft and drapey, perfect for twirling.

So when the tutorial called for a narrow or rolled hem for the bottom ruffles, I was like “oh-oh”, how do I get around that.  I would have gone down the rolled hem route if I had 4 spools of purple overlocking thread since I conquered that fear already on this project.  But I didn’t.

I’ve tried to sew a narrow hem once before but without much luck, there was no way I could fold 1/8″ and sew that properly, so I just ended up cutting the fabric a bit bigger to make it easier for me to fold over and sew.   But with  6 yards of fabric to hem up, I think it was time to learn to sew a narrow hem on my machine.

There are many narrow hem tutorials around but this one at THREADS really explain it well I think.  I found how the actual foot works and trouble shooting photos really helped me understand how to use this narrow hem foot properly.  And yes, I finally conquered my fear of sewing narrow hems.  Is there anything that you still need to learn about your sewing machine?  I may try to learn how to sew a button hole next time.