Rita B. Duckett, a retired department store drapery designer and seamstress, died Tuesday of stroke complications at Good Samaritan Nursing Center. The Hamilton resident was 85.

Mrs. Duckett retired in 1978 from Hochschild, Kohn & Co., where she made slipcovers and draperies in the old department store's workrooms at Park Avenue and Centre Street. Earlier she had worked for the old Schleisner Co. women's store at Howard and Saratoga streets.

Born in Baltimore and raised on Mount Royal Avenue, the former Rita Burns attended Corpus Christi Parochial School. She was a 1936 graduate of Seton High School and studied at the Maryland Institute College of Art.

Her husband of 45 years, Lawrence E. Duckett Sr., died in 1986.

Services will be held at 7 p.m. today at Leonard J. Ruck Funeral Home, 5305 Harford Road.

She is survived by a son, Lawrence E. Duckett Jr. of White Plains; three daughters, Rita Sasdelli of Annapolis, Eugenia Duckett of Baltimore and Roberta Arnesen of Willow Hill, Pa.; seven grandchildren; and eight great-grandchildren.