Advance Your Sewing Skills Session 6: Several Ways to Hem

One of the finals things you do on a project whether it's a home dec project or a garment is probably a hem. Now, when you first started out sewing, a basic beginner sewer, you'll learn how to do a double fold hem, and that's what I have here in front of me. You can see it's a nice row of stitching along the edge, it's finished on the wrong side and that's done by double folding your fabric. So just as a quick refresher, a double fold hem, you would fold up, however thick you want your hem to be. It could be 1/2 inch, you could be doing 1/4 inch, you would press it and then you would fold it again and then stitch and that's your double fold hem.

Well, there are different ways to do hems, some that may look a little more professional depending on what you're putting them on and ones that help you maximize your amount of fabric. And what I mean by that is you may have, say you're making a pair of pants and you only have maybe 1/4 inch or 1/2 inch of fabric that you can spare to make the hem of the pants before they become too short. So obviously you don't have enough room to be able to do a double fold hem and that's where something like hem tape can really come in handy. So this is hem tape, and you'll find it at your local craft or fabric store. It's over with the blanket binding and the bias tape and the other sorts of finishes, that come in little packages like this, and it essentially looks almost like a piece of ribbon.

You can see is called hem tape, and I'm gonna show you how to use it, it's pretty easy. So we have, we'll just use a little rectangle. We'll pretend this is the bottom edge of a pair of pants or a shirt or anything along those lines. What I wanna do is I wanna take my hem tape and I want to just barely overlap my fabric onto that hem tape. So if you have, a sheer fabric it's really easy to see through, to be able to see where you're lining your fabric up along your hem tape, you can also sort of feel along the hem tape with your fingers where it is.

You can feel the different levels, but if you look really closely to the hem tape, you can see there's these little lines on them, sort of just ingrained in the hem tape itself and those will actually help you line up your fabric along one of those lines. So I'm gonna line mine up along the center line there in my hem tape, and I'm gonna go ahead and put a couple pins in place just to hold it 'cause it is kind of slick. It's not quite as slick as maybe, a satin ribbon or something would be, but just like enough to where it might move while I'm stitching. So I just wanna put a couple pins in place to hold it. I'm gonna take it over to my machine and I'm gonna stitch and I'm going to stitch fairly closely along the raw edge of my fabric.

So I can do that. I'm going to do it by having my needle just in the center position so I can use the little mark on my foot to help keep everything lined up. I am just stitching right along the edge of my fabric. Again, because of the way I've put my pins in, because it's such a thin strip of hem tape that I'm pinning to the fabric I do have to remove 'em when I get to them because there really is no way to stitch around them without them getting in the way, I'll go ahead and take 'em out. I'm just stitching right along the edge.

Take out my last pin, hold everything in place and then stitch, right off the edge. Now I need to take it over and do some pressing. So I'm gonna trim my thread and get my pressing mat ready. So you can see what I've done is I have my hem tape and I've stitched right along the edge of my fabric. So you can see it's attached to this is the right side of my fabric, and now I just need to fold it under.

So what I'm gonna do is fold under the hem tape just like this, to where I don't wanna see any of that hem tape on the right side of my fabric so I just want a tiniest bit of the right side of the fabric folded under like so, go ahead and give it a nice press, then we're gonna go back and stitch it again, press. I like to press from both sides. So I have, you see I've folded under, just like this, and I've just barely have a little bit of fabric and actually I'm gonna show you, you can see where my fold line is right here. So in order to complete this hem and you completely encase the raw edge of my fabric, I'm only using up about 1/4 of an inch. So if I was in that predicament where I didn't have enough fabric to be able to create my double fold hem, I could do something like hem tape, and I would barely be using up any of my fabric length to create my hem and I'm still going to have a nice, finished look.

So I give that a press, I could put a couple pins in and then all I would do is take that over to my machine and stitch my hem tape down. But I actually have one that I have already done so we can look at both of them. So again, I would take it over, stitch it down, and then I would have something that looks like this. So I have my original stitching from where I attached my hem tape to my fabric. I have the stitching that's holding my hem tape down.

This is the wrong side of my fabric. Everything is held down. I have no raw edges of the fabric. On the right side, if you compare this to the double fold hem, you really can't tell any difference at all. There's about the same thickness involved because you have that layer of hem tape, and it still looks nice and finished and you didn't have to use up that extra length of your fabric.

Now, if you're making something that maybe is a little lighter weight fabric, it's not just a cotton or maybe a heavier pant fabric whatever you're making, you can use a more decorative hem tape. So this is hem tape that comes in sort of a lacier version. So you would attach it the exact same way. You would line it up along the edge of your fabric, you'd overlap it a little bit, you'd stitch it in place and using something that has lacy, yes it is more decorative, but it can actually help you because you can see through the lace, till you're able to line it up along your fabric, whether then having to use the lines or measuring or anything like that. So you could see right through it and line it up really easily.

So that is how you would use hem tape but it also comes in a variety of color. So I just picked up a brown, it would contrast nicely with my green, but if you're using green fabric, you can find green hem tape and use that as well. Now, if sewing the hem tape in place seems like too big of a hassle, or you don't wanna mess with that, or you want a nice finished hem, but you don't wanna actually have to do any stitching, you can use fusible hem tape. So that's what this hem was created using was a fusible hem tape. You can see it's nice, secured everywhere.

It looks nice on both sides and this is what fusible hem tape looks like. It comes in a variety of widths so I have a thinner version here and a thicker version and you would pick the width that corresponds with the width of hem that you wanna do. So in this case, I have a fairly narrow hem so I use the narrow hem tape, so use this. All I have to do is tear off a length, about the length of that I want my hem to be and I'm just going to treat this as if I'm going to do my double fold hem. So I would start out, pressing under a raw edge, like so, because even if I'm going to be fusing it in place with this hem tape, I still don't want any raw edges on the wrong side, as well as, making it look finished on the right side.

So I have that pressed under, now I'd like to put this on while my fabric is still slightly warm. I can go ahead and place my hem tape right on the fabric, because, it's almost like an interfacing or a fusible web, it's going to act like glue. It's going to melt right to the fabric. So because my fabric was just still a little bit warm to the touch, I can press that in place with my fingers, and now I'm ready to fold it over, again, creating that hem and now I can just press it in place. This hem tape is acting just like a glue, and it's going to secure everything, right where I want it.

Now, depending on the fabric you're using, you may have to adjust your heat settings. There are instructions that come with your hem tape as to what heat you wanna use with what kind of fabric. I have it on a fairly high heat because I'm using a cotton, a medium weight cotton and I wanna make sure that that heat is getting all the way through the fabric to be able to melt that glue. So you can see it's nice and fused in place. I just like to use my finger to make sure that everything is nice and secure, and I would be ready to use this on my garment.

It is a permanent hem tape, so if I wanted to remove this hem, I wouldn't really actually be able to do it. It is like a glue, it's stuck in the fabric, there is no removing it, I would just have to cut it off. What you wanna be careful about is actually getting it to hot. So if you have your iron, it's, maybe you forgot to change the setting you have it all the way really, really hot, you can actually melt it too much. As if you can see it starting to get a little bit darker in areas, and eventually you'll actually melt this tape too much that it almost did stops being sticky, and you can see where it was nice and secure earlier, I've gotten it too hot and it's starting to peel away a little bit.

So you wanna make sure that you just press it a little bit and then check it and then if it is fused in place, then just be done, don't try and add any extra heat to it, you could end up overheating it to where it doesn't work. Now, once it's in place, you still can wash the garment, press it and do everything like that, normal care with that fabric because it is that permanent tape but when you're first applying it just a little bit of heat to keep it in place and then let it cool and you're good to go. So that's how you use fusible hem tape. The final hem I'm gonna show you is one of the more, fancy or professional hems you would find on the bottom of a pair of slacks or something, and that's called a blind hem. As you can see, we have our hem, and we have just these tiny little stitches.

Now, obviously I've used some white threads so it stands out. If I was actually going to be making a blind hem that I wanted to not see, if I'm using green fabric, I would use green thread. You can see that this is what my stitches look like on the wrong side and we do this by using a blind hem foot. That was the first, I talked about it in the very intro that we have our blind hem foot, and that yours might look something a little bit different than this but that it's important that it has that fin or a guide because that is what it's gonna help us line up our hem as we stitch. We also need to know what our blind hem stitch looks like to be able to select it on our machine.

So if your machine goes by a little pictures, then this is what it's gonna look like. You're gonna have three or four straight lines and then a little V out to the side, followed with more straight lines. So find the picture on your stitch guide that looks like this and select that one, that's the one we're gonna use. If you have to refer to your manual, go ahead and do that to find the correct stitch. So when you're doing a blind hem, it really comes down to the folding.

That's what, enables you to create this blind hem. So we're gonna pretend that this is the bottom of our pant leg that we wanna create our hem on. If you're using a medium weight to heavier weight fabric, you need to go ahead and finish this edge somehow. So you could do that just by zigzag stitching, overcast stitching, or maybe using a serger to finish that. I'm gonna show you a different method today that really encases that raw edge, it makes everything look nice and finished on both sides, wrong side and right side of your garment.

So to start off with, we would take the lower edge of our pant leg, and we would fold it up about 1/4 of an inch. If you wanted to get your hem guide out and measure, you can do that, but this is really just, we wanna fold in place, just so I'm, this is how I'm finishing the edge. So rather than doing a zigzag or using my serger, I'm just adding an extra fold, to the bottom of my pants here. I know I talked about at the very beginning of this class about turning the automatic steam function off on your iron and that's exactly why you want to do that because you saw that steam that came out, my hands are pretty far away from the iron, but you could end up burning your fingers, so check that before you use it. So I have my edge either folded under or serged, and now it's time to actually create my hem.

So hems on pants can be anywhere between, one inch, you could have up to an inch and 1/2 hem, it really just depends on how much fabric you have to work with. So I have my seam hem guide set for a one inch fold. So I'm going to fold over one inch and you'll find that you get, once you've been sewing for a little while, depending on what you're used to making, whether it's garments and you're used to seeing a 5/8 inch, you could probably just fold a pretty accurate 5/8 inch. Maybe you're a quilter and you just know exactly what 1/4 inch looks like. For me, it seems like it was difficult for me to just eyeball an inch, but I wanna make sure I have just an inch folded up all the way along this edge here.

I'm just pressing it in place, measure one last time and get this a good final press. Again, if this was our pant leg we were working with, we'd obviously be going all the way around the edge of our pant leg, folding up our, in this case, one inch hem or one and 1/2 inch, whatever you'd like to use. Now we have to do one more fold. So, this is the wrong side of our fabric. We've been folding under towards the wrong side just like you would if you're doing that double fold hem, but what we now wanna do is flip to the right side of our work.

We're gonna fold back to where you're exposing just in our case, it is the folded under edge. If you used your serger or your zigzag stitch, you would be exposing the zigzag finished edge of your pants or your work that you're going with and I'm just gonna give it a press to hold everything in place. I like to do pressing to hold it in place that way I don't have to worry about removing pins, while I'm stitching this. So give it a nice press. While that is cooling off, I'm gonna go over to my machine, and I'm going to change out my foot.

I have my regular presser foot on for all of the other hems I was doing. Now it's time to put the blind hem foot on. So just snaps in place just like any of your other feet do. Again, I like to make sure that my needle thread is through the slit in the foot and going out towards the back. Now, what I need to do is I need to select my blind hem foot stitch.

Again, I told you it is, looks like the straight lines and then we have the little zigzag that goes over to the right in this case. On my machine and your machine might do this as well, once you have selected a specialty stitch, it will tell you what foot to put on so you'll know that, you have to change your foot. It'll give you sort of a little alert to know that you need to change your foot. So what I need to do is I'm gonna put this on my machine to where I have, this would be my... if I was doing pants, all my pants would be over here and this is just the edge I'm working with, my little folded edge and I have the fold of my hem.

So this is my one inch fold. I wanna line that up with the fin or guide I have along the edge there in the center of my foot. Now I'm just going to stitch. I just act as if I'm doing a straight stitch, my foot and my machine does all the work. So what it's going to do is it's going to do several straight stitches over into my zigzag serged or folded edge, and then take one small stitch, actually up into our pants.

By taking just the little stitches here and there, it's just taking a little bites out of the fabric that will if we're using a thread that blends in, you won't even be able to see those little bites, little stitches that it's taking, everything will look nice and neat on your outside of your pants. So I'm just watching to make sure that my zigzag, if you will, stitch that goes over to grab the actual pant leg is actually catching the pants. If you think that you might be getting off at all, you can with your needle down, just lift your presser foot, make any adjustments you need to make, and then realign that fin long that fold, make sure everything is nice and neat. Go right along the edge. I'm just gonna go ahead and stitch right off the edge, because if I was actually doing this on pants, it'd be going in the round and I would just be stitching over where I started.

So I can clip my threads because I have the black and white thread here you could easily see, we can even look on this side, this is what our stitches look like. We had our straight stitches and our little zigzag stitch there. If you turn it back over, you can see that that zigzag just barely caught into the edge of our pants. So when we flip it up, we have just these tiny little bites that were taken out of the fabric. Again, if this was the same color thread as my fabric, it would blend right in.

I would take it over and give it a press and then it would look just like this. You can see it'd be nice finish to the bottom edge of your pants. Next time you have on some dress pants look at the bottom of them, you'll see that it has a nice blind hem on there that looks good on both the wrong side and the right side and it's a nice professional finish. So whether you're doing some hems, whether you want to add darts and pleats to your project, whether you wanna do different seam finishes to make everything look nice on the inside and the outside, or you just wanna be more comfortable with the different stitch lengths and different types of stitching there is out there, I really hope you take all of these tips and techniques and really try 'em out in your next project, whether that's home dec or garments.