Ice Mom’s Sewing Guide: Hemming a Figure Skating Dress

If you’ve come this far in your sewing adventure, you know that the figure skating dress is almost done. Congratulations! Truly, your figure skater can probably wear the dress out on the ice without a hem. Most Lycra-based stretchy fabrics won’t fray. A stretch velvet might shed some of its pile near the cut edge, but the Lycra and netting should be just fine. In fact, next time you see a dress vendor at a figure skating competition, look at the dress hems. I bet you anything you’ll see some that are unfinished.

The petal hem. I received an e-mail about petal hems this week. They’re beautiful with deep scalloped skirt hems. To a sewer, I tell you: they look like a nightmare to hem. But, look closely at the skirts and again – the hems are unfinished. I found an example on a ready-to-wear site. You can click on the black dress photo and really zoom in on that hem. See? Not finished at all. If you’re really nervous about the hem falling apart, you can run a thin line of Fray Check at the very end of the fabric, but you need to know that the Fray Check will make that edge slightly darker. No one will notice it from the rink stands, though. If you choose this hem, understand that the fabric must be something that’s not going to fall apart. Lycra, athletic mesh, and stretch velvet should all work. If you’re using a woven fabric for the skirt, count on it fraying. You must hem.

The plain hem. Your pattern instructions will tell you how deep to make the hem. If you’re using Lycra, athletic mesh, or stretch velvet, you can use a single-fold hem. Wovens should have a double-fold hem. In other words, the single-fold hem is just the fabric turned under to the wrong side, with the cut edge visible. A double-fold hem takes the single-fold hem and folds it up once more, concealing the cut edge.

Mark the hem’s depth. I used to take my little metal ruler and the skirt over to the ironing board and do the measure, press, measure, press thing. What a pain in the rear. My method is to find the appropriate hem measurement on my sewing machine’s face plate (to the right of the presser foot), set my machine’s straight stitch length to something really long – like a basting stitch – and run a line of basting along the hemline. No hunching over the ironing board with an iron and pressing tiny bits of fabric.

I take the skirt to the ironing board and press the hem allowance to the wrong side of the fabric. Pressing means leaving the iron on the fabric without moving. Make sure you’re using an iron temperature that won’t scorch the fabric. If you’re sewing a single-fold hem, just turn up the seam allowance once. If you’re sewing a double-fold hem, turn it up after you’ve pressed the single-fold hem and then press again.

Pin the hem in place. To stitch the hem I always use a zig-zag stitch because it’s stretchy. You can also use a double needle and a slightly longer straight stitch. Don’t let your double needle intimidate you. Load two spools of thread on the machine and thread the machine with both threads. Poke one thread through one needle and the other thread in the remaining needle. When you sew, the bobbin thread on the opposite side will zig-zag between the two needles and make the hem stretchy.

The zig-zag hem. This one’s very easy. Just run some narrow zig-zag stitches along the figure skating skirt’s edge. If you have an overlock stitch on your sewing machine, use that.

The rolled hem. This is my hem of choice. It does a great job on athletic mesh as well as any other fabric I’ve fed through my machine. The rolled hem is a row of narrow, close stitches. The presser foot rolls the fabric slightly to the wrong side and the hem has the appearance of a very small cylinder. It can look very pretty, especially in a contrasting color to the dress. I used hot pink thread on the hem of Ice Girl’s silver pop can dress last year and it looked terrific. Of course, no one could see the pink from the stands, but it looked cool up close.

To achieve the rolled hem, you’ll need a serger. I bought mine refurbished with a full factory warranty and I’m really happy with it. Refurbished for me was half price – just $200.  Anyway, my machine’s not fancy, but it works well and has a great rolled hem. Check your serger’s instruction manual for the settings, test it out on a fabric scrap, adjust the tension (yuck), and when you’re happy with it, staple a small sample scrap to an index card with the tension settings and other useful information on it.

Well, sewers? What did I miss? Did I make a mistake or omit something? Do you have a tip for sewing great figure skating dress hems? Please share your ideas and corrections in the comments so we all can learn!

Do you have a question for Ice Mom or the Advisory Board? Are you an expert who would love to be featured on Wednesday’s Ask the Expert post? Is there a blog post that you’d really like to see? Wonderful! Send me an e-mail. No, really. I love e-mail. icemom.diane@gmail.com

Photo credits:
Bias tape skirt hem: debcll on Flickr.com Creative Commons
Blushing yellow tulip: hz536n on Flickr.com Creative Commons
Texes wildflower tulle skirt hem: Cowgirl Fever on Flickr.com Creative Commons