How to Make a Floating Ric Rac Accent

Hi friends of Rosie! Amy here! I’m the fabric buyer from Harts Fabric! I’m going to show you guys a fun, quick and easy way to add a little pizazz to your garment sewing, or even just a fun trick that you can add to other crafty sewing projects. This would be a fun way to add length to a dress, or just add a cute accent to a hemline.

For tutorial sake I’m just showing you guys how to use this technique on scraps, but they are cute scraps! I used the Lotta Jansdotter Lucky Hemendu Cotton in Green Olive.

I also used just a package of Ric Rac.

To get started you need to set up your machine. I’m using the Janome 3160, and I’m using the blind hem stitch. If you have a machine that does not have the bling hem stitch you can just use a straight stitch. You won’t get as much of the Ric Rac shape but you can still achieve the same effect.

Now we are going to select the length of our stitch. This can get a little tricky. I decided to go to with a length of 0.2 which will actually hit the top of my trim every other stich, which worked just fine for the finished product. Ideally your stitch length would match up with your trim, but you can make it work if you are in my boat like this where the trim is a funny length. You also want to use your “Blind Hem Foot” which is foot “G” on the 3160.

So, you want to start with your needle in the down position and have your Ric Rac placed on the right side of the fabric with how much you want the hem to be from the edge. I would suggest pinning your trim into place to keep your line straight.

Now, stitch slowly to make sure your stitch is catching the top of your Ric Rac. When you’re finished you should have something that looks like this:

Now, this looks a little funky, but if you fold it over and press… it’s like magic! Looks so much better! You could make the choice to stop here and have this be your hemline, but we will continue on and add another piece of fabric for the “Floating Ric Rac” look.

So now you are going to take your other piece of fabric with the right side up and place your pressed finished first piece with right side down on top, leaving the amount you want for the hem allowance.

Now with your needle in down position again you are going to make the same stitch along the top of your Ric Rac. Remember: going slow is the key here! When you are finished press it and you should have a backside that looks like this:

The front will look like this:

I hope you enjoyed this fun little technique! It’s fun and it really makes your projects have a fun little detail! There are so many ways that you can add decoration to your finished edges and Janome offers a lot of stitches on this machine. Here’s a little sampler we made of all of the different stitches you could use:

I personally think the scalloped edge would look so cute on the neckline, sleeve and hem of a Mid-Century style dress. So have fun and get creative with those decorative stitches Guys and Gals!

I hope you enjoyed our tutorial and be sure to visit us over at www.sewyourhartout.com


-Amy from Harts Fabric