How to Sew a Hem on Pants

Video Transcript

"Hi, I'm Deborah DeMirza and I'm at Deluxe, a retail clothing boutique in Eugene, Oregon and today I'm going to show you how to sew a hem on pants. And it depends on what kind of hem you want. If it's a pair of jeans, I usually just mark where I want the hem and then leave an extra, say, inch, so that when you fold it doubly, you have the... the machine stitching is about a half inch from the edge. For a more decorative look, you can also have a wider stitch, but then you'll have to allow more seam allowance. Now, if you're going to had sew a hem, again, you mark where you want your stitching. And I usually start by doing a little... I don't knot my thread. I just do three little loops over the same spot to lock in your thread. And that works so much better than knotting it because then you won't have a knot to wear off. So once you start that on the hem, on the turned up hem part, and you can turn your work as you... to keep it secure while you're sewing it. And then what I do is I usually catch just the slightest be of fabric on the pants themselves. And then you come underneath the edge of your pant hem, which by the way you can overcast first. Make sure it doesn't unravel like this. So you can do a zig zag stitch before you start sewing all around the raw edge or you can do a... on the serger you can bind the edge that way. And then slightly over, you just take another little bit, tiny little bit of threads on the pants. And then again under the edge of the overcast seam, and it'll just keep going until you get it done, and then you won't have very much of the seam showing on the outside. Now, if you have really thick fabric, like a lot of the wools and any kind of really thick fabric, obviously if you sew over the edge, when you turn it on this side, you're going to have this big bump that shows all around there. So what you'll do is a different kind of stitch. You don't want to stitch over the edge. You want to stitch right under the edge. So you turn down that quarter of an inch, just pluck a few threads from your pants after you've knotted it, and then you take a little bit from the turned down quarter inch on that. And then you again catch in between a few little threads, and then a catch on the turned down side of the seam so you're not binding over the edge of the pant. So you're actually... it'll be just a little bit loose on the edge, but when you turn it down, it'll be secured and there won't be any of that visible bulky line on the outside of your thick fabric. So that's how you sew a hem on pants."