Sewing A Fish Line Hem

I had finished the RWB pageant outfit. And it is ready for the day in 2 weeks.

But deep down inside I really wanted to try a skirt with the fish line hem. I like that look. I have looked at a lot of video tutorials on the web and I think I can do it. It may take some practice tho. Of course I had to go buy some more fabric. Just one yard of blue and one yard of red. Which is way more than enough. At $4 yard, it's worth to keep it on hand. I already had the white.

Of course there is always a supply of new fishing line around to sew with. I just had to explain that I needed it to sew with.

A quick review of how I did it. Cut 3 skirts from my pattern, one red, one white, one blue.  (Look here to see Part 1 and look here to see Part 2 of the sewing process of the RWB outfit.) The bottom tier is length of pattern and the other 2 tiers are each cut an 1- 1/2 shorter, so the 3 pieces form a tier. I aligned all 3 pieces together at the waist and stitched them together with a zigzag stitch to keep them together and to keep the waist edge from stretching out.

Set my stitch to a zizzag form of stitch and tested it on a scrap piece of the fabric. Its not a true zigzag but a double wide zigzag close-together-stitch to catch the fishing line in between the stitches side to side. Hope that makes sense.

I then measured length of fishing line to go around bottom of hem skirt. Wrapped fishing line around an empty thread spool and taped the end and microwaved for 4 minutes and let it cool on the spool before unwinding it. At first I only microwaved for like 1 and 1/2 minutes and realized it needed more. So after some time adjustments, I used 4 minutes and it seemed to work how I wanted it. (All this was in the tutorials.)

Then, free handedly, no pinning or ironing, I placed the finishing line on wrong side of fabric at hem and turned about 1/4 inch fabric up over it and began to zizgag, leaving about a 3 inch piece of line out before my first stitch. I zigzagged right to the edge and as it stitched and back and forth and had the fishing line in between the width of the stitches it made a nice tiny round hem.

Finish the waist band off with a stretchy elastic sequin trim.

After all 3 tiers completed, I trimmed the excess raw edge off, very carefully. It came out perfect.

  

I surprised myself. And you can too. It's easy.

Now I have 2 skirts and 1 top.