How Do You Make a Hem by Machine?

Video Transcript

"Hi. I am at Deluxe. A resale clothing store where we also feature local designers fashions and we also do alterations. And right now I'm going to show you how to do a machine hem on this little sample piece of fabric. So I'm going to first neaten this edge up. And you can use either scissors or this really cool little rotary cutter which is great for thin fabrics. So you just roll along one edge like that and it cuts your fabric. If you go over a pin it will make a ding in the rotary blade which I guess we've done here. We've gone through a pin and it's not cutting all the way through. But they work really quickly. Now what you want to do. I'm just going to show you a simple little hem. You just turn under the amount of fabric you want. I use a lot of pins to make sure that my fabric stays where start it and it ends up where I want it. So you can use pins. If you're going to sew with pins in place you need to put them crosswise of your machine needle and you go very slowing over the pin. Otherwise you'll break your needle. Or else you'll bend the tip and it'll snag your fabric. So I'm just going to do a few inches of this hem on the machine. And I don't backstitch when I'm doing a hem. I just overlap stitches. Backstitching will lock in the ends, raw edges of something that you want to keep locked together. So I'm going to take this part off of my machine to make it a little easier to get this little sleeve in there. And you can use these guidelines here so you have a totally even hem. I'm going to use this one here. And you put your lock down and you take your pin out. I take mine out. Or you can sew over it gently. And I'm going to keep my eye right there on that line with the edge of the fabric right there so I'm going to have a nice beautiful even line the whole way. And you just keep it there. I pull out the pin. Keep your eye right there where that fabric is lining up against that measurement. And I am going to stop right there just to show you that you can continue all the way around and when you follow that line you will come exactly over the beginning of your line so that it will have a really nice neat clean finish. Now here's the other side where you have your hem exactly the same width from edge to edge all the way around your fabric. And that's how you do a machine stitching."