I thought I'd share how I hem towels, runners, etc. I learned this technique from Marcy Tilton during a weaving guild presentation, Marcy also lives here in Southern Oregon, just a few miles down the road from our previous home, in this home I'm around 40 miles north of her. It makes for a beautiful hem.
I made myself some file folder 'rulers' per Marcy's instruction, cutting them the length of the file folder in numerous widths. I then mark on each one how wide it is, punch a hole in it and hang them all in the sewing room on a metal ring. Over the years I've only replaced these once, they last a long time. Excuse the stained ironing board cover - it's fairly new but it doesn't take long for it to become stained....and we have really good water coming from our well.
For this runner I decided I wanted a 1 3/4" plain weave border on the end of the runners so I turned the runner over, laid the 'ruler' at the bottom of the tulips, folded over the hem once and steam ironed
Next I turned under the raw edge and steam ironed that too
Then add the pins and it's ready to hand hem
Here is the stack of table runners waiting to be hemmed
What a great idea! It seems that I'm always struggling to get each of my teatowels the same and in one fell swoop you've sorted out that problem.
ReplyDeleteSusan at Thrums hems before she washes, I hem after wet finishing, what did you do?
I hem after washing. I've always been concerned that if I hemmed first maybe my hemming thread wouldn't shrink and it would pucker or something. But I saw that Susan hems before washing so it's obviously not a problem. Sure would be easier with the cloth stiff right off the loom.
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