Duchess & Hare Loosey Goosey Dress Release & Rolled Hem Tutorial

After a bit of a co-vid induced sewing slump I’m again sewing all the things! Case in point: I’ve participated in three pattern tests in the last three weeks and starting today I’ll be sharing the first of my projects with you!

Whenever there’s a Duchess and Hare test, I try to jump on it because it’s usually a great way to use up my woven stash and her drafting is top notch.

The Loosey Goosey Dress/Top is the latest one – it’s a beginner friendly, easy to fit dress (or tunic) with no closures – no zipper, buttons, or snaps. The dress has four length options with a tiered or basic skirt, an optional flounce sleeve, and 3 pocket styles: inseam or 2 types of patch pockets. The dress is sized from 2T – 10.

I ended up making two Loosey Goosey dresses – one for each daughter. My youngest measured between 2 and 3 for her chest, so I went with a 2 — I recommend sizing up if you’re between chest sizes (one of my recent knit sews said to size down, and so I had a brain fart and sized down on this one without thinking). I lengthened her dress to a size 4 and widened to a 4 at the waist.

Duchess and Hare has instructions for blending patterns on their website and I highly recommend following them for this pattern as you need to ensure the neck hole can fit the head through (length needs to be added at the shoulder rather than at the waist).

My eldest daughter measured size 5 chest. I decided to go with a 6 chest so she had some growing room, 6x waist, and 9 height.

In terms of getting this dress on, that can be a little tricky if you’re not used to it – both arms need to be up in the air in order to slide it on and off.

One of my favorite new techniques I used with this dress was doing a rolled hem on my serger with embroidery floss in the looper! A rolled hem always looks best with a thicker type of thread such as woolly nylon, but I only had wooly nylon in cream, black, and pink. On my youngest’s dress I used machine embroidery thread in the looper, but it has the same sort of effect as regular serger thread as it’s pretty thin.

How to Use Embroidery Floss in Your Serger

For my eldest’s, I hunted through my hand embroidery thread and settled on this jade color. Here’s what you need to do:

1. Carefully remove 3 threads from embroidery thread skein
2. Hand wind onto empty bobbin spool (I used my sewing machine bobbin winder on its slowest setting)
3. Set up serger for rolled hem. On my Juki 654DE, I have the following settings:
   • Right needle, serger thread (it will be visible so you may want something that blends with your floss). Tension: 4
   • Left needle, removed
   • Stitch finger off
   • Lower looper, serger thread. Tension: 9
   • Upper looper, embroidery floss. Tension 1
   • Stitch length, 1.5
   • Differential feed, N
4. Start on a scrap of fabric to confirm settings are right before continuing onto your pattern piece.

I really love the effect of it! Looks like ribbon on the edge of the flounce! ❤

Grab theLoosey Goosey dress while it’s on sale this week! (And for some other ideas – this looks amazing in solid linens, challis, lawn etc! I’ll be on the lookout for some solids to make my next ones with!)

Fabric & Notions Summary

• Art Gallery Fabric, Cotton, Safari Moon “Soaring Free Clear”
• Lace – Hobby Lobby
• Embroidery Floss – Anchor 189

Disclosure: I received a copy of this pattern in exchange for testing it.