Hi, my name is Sam Lewis from madebysam.com and I'm here to talk to you about tips for hemming blue jeans. The first and most important thing to remember, is that the seam ripper is your friend. Before you do anything else to try and hem a pair of blue jeans, you're going to need to take apart the bottom hem. The way to do that is to go up from underneath on your bottom hem and cut stitches and as you start pulling it, pull the seam apart and you can cut multiples at a time. This is not a fast procedure but it does save you aggravation later down the line. Now when you come to a seam that's been hemmed over, you're going to be very careful that you only cut the hem threads and not the seam threads. On these particular jeans, they're different colors. But on most jeans they're all a gold thread. O.k., once you have your hem apart, if you're only going to be hemming a very small amount, then usually you're going to want to cut off along one of these fold lines, just so you, you always have a straight line that way. If you're going to be cutting a lot of material off, refold your hem and wherever you marked your hem line, measure up and then mark all the way around in chalk or pencil the line you want to re-hem to. Once you do that you're going to want to do a double fold over. And we're just going to put this one, this original one back so you can see the motions to use. You have your cut line here, you fold it under and press it once at about three eighths of an inch. Once you've got that all the way around, press it, do a second turn over of about three eighths of an inch, press that. You'll end up with a big bulky seam at your hem, which if you look at a pair of jeans is about what you want. If you have a good heavy duty sewing machine all you have to do is just sew right from there. If you have a lighter weight sewing machine, or if you're doing it by hand, what you can do to save yourself some aggravation, is take a good sharp pair of sheers and cut out the seam and refold, but you only have two layers for the outside seam instead of three. First thing you want to do when you actually run your seam is take your pressed material, stick it under your presser foot being sure to just catch your folded material underneath and you're going to want to sew from the outside to get a cleaner edge. Hold your material taut with one hand, as you're going over a seam, slow down let the machine go through a stitch at a time to make sure it makes it. You can speed up once you get through that. Then as you reach the end, press your reverse, go back about a quarter of an inch forward over it to lock your stitch and those are some tips for hemming jeans.
norma317
Jun 18, 2009
I'm just thinking of buying a sewing machine and have not sewn since I was a little. girl. 20+ years ago. Thanks for the pointers and for giving me comfort in sewing again. You make it look so easy. Definitely going to buy a machine now.