A Lettuce Edge

I love the look of a lettuce edge especially on little girls clothing. When I started making clothes for my daughter I did numerous searches on how to make a lettuce edge. Each one mentioned a need for a serger, something that was out of my budget. Since that time there have been numerous tutorials on how to create a lettuce edge with a basic sewing machine. Some have additional steps others basically follow the same steps you would use if you had a serger.

Here is how I made the lettuce edge on a dress I made for my daughter. I started with a stretchy fabric, and a color coordinated thread. I set my sewing machine to the widest zig zag stitch available, I than set the stitch length to the shortest possible. With my standard presser foot I lined the fabric up sewed a couple of stitches and started stretching the fabric as I fed it through. I think the most important thing I did was to make sure the stitch fell just over the edge. As I came back to the starting point, I found that it didn’t have the finished look I desired. Rather than stopping I kept sewing around the bottom of the dress until I had gone around 2 times. I now had the finished edge I was looking for.