Thread: Narrow hem foot: valuable tool or not?

I just got mine in the mail and so far I'm having a devil of a time getting it to work with a tutorial right in front of me.

Is this a good tool to have or is it a waste of money?

I would never, ever sew chiffon again without mine. So I guess that means its invaluable to me ;-)

It is the biggest pain in the butt add-on ever made for a sewing machine and designed by some sort of evil mind, but when it works (on the rare days when somehow I actually manage to feed it properly for more than a foot), it is friggin' awesome. Of course, whenever I get it to work beautifully, I get so happy and excited that I stop paying attention and end up with a mess ;-)

I never use it.When I do, I make longshoremen blush.

I use the serger on chiffon hems, then fold that over and stitch it using the regular foot.

The key is to let it start itself, which means an inch or so from the end might not be finished (so you go back and hand stitch that tiny piece) and to go SLOWLY with it. I could never hem flimsy, drapey fabrics (especially on a curve) until I started using one of these.

Note, I actualy prefer my shell hemmer that allows me to use a zigzag to the regular narrow hem foot (though that is better than no hemmer at all!)

I love my rolled hem foot. I have had a large learning curve, though. I have also discovered that if I put a line of big basting stitches about a 1/2 inch above the bottom of where I want to hem before I do the actual hemming, it works so much better.

{{{HUGS}}}

once you get it going.. you will LOVE it!

The way I do it... double fold under the edge you want to hem and pin just the first inch or so. place under the foot and make a few stitches forward and back to lock in place (oh, and leave a long thread tail). with needle down, lift up the foot, remove pin, and gently lift fabric and get it to slide into curl of the foot, pulling loose thread tails out behind. drop foot back down & start sewing. give the tails a tug back with left hand to get fabric moving while guiding the raw edge into the curl with right hand. Don't sew too fast!

For fabrics like chiffon - I like a zig zag stitch much better than a straight one.
Makes for a neater rolled edge.

What Caasi said... my Janome's rolled edge is a little happier about getting going than my old machine. On my old machine I would snip a square of tear-away stabilizer and start by pinning the rolled under bit to that. The feed dogs were happy to grab the stabilizer, and then I could concentrate on feeding in the curled edge.

One thing I've found on both machines is that if you hold your curled edge UP a little bit... so it is feeding into the foot from above, not level with the foot... the curl goes in much more easily.

Great tips! I'd like to know more about the zig-zag rolled hem technique. What does the presser foot I use look like?

just keep practicing is is an awesome foot for your machine!!!

Andalee, this is what the shell hemmer looks like for my machine (this is one I use the zig zag with):

husqvarna viking 3mm narrow hemmer presser foot, shell hemmer

Ohhhhh.....holding the fabric ABOVE the foot make so much more sense. I'll just keep practicing. Thanks!

Caasious, your directions make alot more sense than any of the tutorials, thank you soooo much.

oooh I wish I could figure mine out. As soon as I got a serger I gave up on the rolled hem foot.

Originally Posted by eshtabellydance

oooh I wish I could figure mine out. As soon as I got a serger I gave up on the rolled hem foot.

This.

Originally Posted by tigerb

One thing I've found on both machines is that if you hold your curled edge UP a little bit... so it is feeding into the foot from above, not level with the foot... the curl goes in much more easily.

This.

I love mine - but sometimes when I don't use it very often I forget what I'm doing. I keep some scrap chiffon on hand to putter around with when I need to use it.

I accidentally used it with a zig zag stitch the other day, and thought that it turned out pretty cool. I didn't know you could "legitimately" do it that way.