How to Hem Pants That Are Too Long

Video Transcript

"Hi, I'm Debrah DeMirza, at Deluxe, a resale clothing boutique, in Eugene, Oregon, and today, I'm going to show you how to hem a pair of pants, so what you can do, is undo the hem of the pants, first, and then lay them out folded, where the center of the front and the back, are folded, and once you have opened these out, and laid them flat, and if you need to iron this so it lays flatter, you can do that, and then so what you do, is you lay your pants out, on a nice flat open surface, and then what you do, is you take the crotch seam, and you find that, and you hold onto it, and then you pull it taut, so that the legs, the bottom of the legs, are even at the bottom, and then you lay your pants out flat, so that theres' no buckling, and once you get that line where you want it, you can take, I usually hem them a little shorter in the front, so there's not as much of a break over the shoe, so you find out where the front is, and then you can take a flat edge ruler, and you can usually leave about a two inch amount, for the hem, and what I usually do, is on the angle, you can take a piece of tailor's chalk, and you can hold your ruler flat, and tight, and then you can make this line, all across the edge, and then what I do, is I fold over up the first leg, and then make sure you're holding everything tight, so it doesn't shift, and then you can make them a line, on the bottom or in between, and then you fold up the next part of the leg, and then you can make another line, following along the straight edge of the ruler, so that when you take your ruler off, you've got the line here, you've got the inner tooth seam lines marked, and you've got the outers seam line marked, and then what you can do as well, is make another line, so that you'll know that you want this much of a hem, and how much to cut, so you can do the same thing here, opening it up, and then marking each layer. This one does the back and both sides, and then this one does the very back one, so then you know that this is your fold line, and that this is your cut line,so you can cut your fabric here, on both sides of the pants, and then you can fold it. Once you've got that cut, then you know that you can fold it, and what I do, is I usually zig zag, or surge the edge, the raw edge of the pant leg, before I hem them, so once you have that chalk line on there, and after you've folded it, and hemmed it, you still might see a little bit of a chalk line. If you get the proper kind of chalk, it just disappears when you iron it, so you don't want to use, like a red piece of chalk, that, I think red doesn't really come off that easily. If you use just a regular piece of chalk, you can just take your fabric, and just kind of scruff it up, and it comes off easily, so that's why I like to use regular chalk too, so that's how you hem a pair of pants."