Sewing on ribbon: the edger and the quilter

Having made the chiffon volant for my dress, I have attached it to the edge of the hem, and now I want to finish it off with a narrow satin ribbon.

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The ribbon is only 5mm wide, and it should sit with one side on the skirt and with the other side on the volant (and skirt hem to which it is attached, underneath). Plus, I want to stitch as close to the edges of the ribbon as I possibly can, and the stitching should be straight and not resemble a drunkard’s walk. Not too much to ask, is it?

The edger

Step one is to stitch the ribbon on the side of the hem so that the seam attaching the volant to the hem is hidden. This will be the left side of the ribbon. I am using the edger to help me guide the ribbon straight and stitch very close to the edge.

​The foot ensures that the ribbon remains straight, so the hardest bit here is to feed the material straight too. Oh yes, the dress is stretchy jersey and the volant is shifty chiffon – did I mention that?

This produces an excellent result:

​The edger is a curious foot meant for attaching several layers of lace and ribbons to the main fabric, all in one go, yet perfectly aligned. Singer used to supply them as standard with their sewing machines, see for example the Singer 201K manual from my Downloads link.

My edger is adjustable though, it comes mounted on an adaptor.

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This is a modern variant, also suitable for zig-zag. The beauty of it is that you can get the adaptors and the attachments separately, so you only need one set of attachments for all your machines, plus the adaptors as required, and you can get all sorts of weird and wonderful attachments there.

​These are just some examples, there’s much more out there!

The quilter

Step two is to stitch the right side of the ribbon just as straight as the left side. The difficulty here is that the dress hem underneath ends just about there too, so you have five layers of fabric to the left of your stitch and one layer of chiffon to the right. Any centred foot will slip on that! I would need a foot that would only sit to the left of the needle but that would have a guide on the right to keep me stitching straight. I don’t have such a foot… No, wait… I do! It’s a bit unconventional, but a quilter with a guide set close to it, will do just that!

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And here is the final result:

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Job done! 🙂

Buy me a coffee 🙂