Hi friends! I recently learned about this hemming technique to create baby hems/ rolled hems, and my mind was blown! And you know what? Its perfect for your cascade skirts made in lightweight fabrics! It uses a product called ban-rol, which is a waistband stiffener notion thats usually used to provide structure. You want to make sure its a ban-rol with a weave – its the only way it will work for this hemming method.
Now, this may seem tedious, because you’ll need quite a long piece to accommodate the very long hemline of the Cascade skirt. But honestly, isn’t the other way of doing a rolled hem also tedious, with all the different rows of stitching? I find any rolled hem or baby hem to be rather annoying, ha. But with this method, the result is super clean with no ripples. Which is why I fell in love with it.
So you need to cut a strip of the ban-rol at the length you need for your hem. (quite long here!)
On one of the long sides, start pulling off the long vertical strands, one by one.
This is the part that can get tedious, as the full length of our ban-rol is quite long. You can also do the hem in sections, with shorter strips of ban-rol, to make this part easier.
How many strands you pull off depends on how small of a hem you want. If you want a super tiny 1/8″ baby hem, you would only pull off a few strands. Since technically Cascade has 1/2″ hem allowance, I pulled off enough strands to make 1/4″.
Now lay your skirt down with the right side facing up. Line the “frayed” edge of the ba-rol with the raw edge of the hem.
Stitch the ban-rol tho the skirt with a straight stitch. It is very important that your stitching stays within the “frayed” section of the ban-rol, otherwise it will be hard to remove it later on. So sew slow and take your time!
Now flip the ban-rol out and around to the wrong side of the fabric. The sturdiness of the ban-rol creates the final width of your hem and keeps it even and in place.
Stitch on the inner edge of the hem, close to the ban-rol, but not going over onto it.
Like this!
Now the fun part! Starting at one end, carefully pull the ban-rol out. As long as you didn’t stitch over into the non-frayed part, it should pull out pretty easily.
Also, pssst – you can reuse the ban-rol for another project!
Give your hem a good press. And look how beautiful and flat and even that little hem is! This is from the inside…
And from the outside!
What do you think? Would you give this method a try?
LOOKING FOR MORE CASCADE POSTS?
- How to Choose Between Cascade and Cascade Curve
- Sewalong : pockets and side seams
- Sewalong : french side seams (optional)
- Sewalong : rolled hem
- Sewalong : bonus hemming method – ban-roll hem (this post!)
- Sewalong : lining (optional)
- Sewalong : tie waistband
- Sewalong : button waistband
- Hack : straight hem
- Hack : mini ballet skirt
- Hack: ruffle hem
DON’T HAVE THE PATTERN YET?
Order Cascade sizes 0-20 or curve sizes 14-34!
