14-Day Learn to Sew Series - Basic Hems

Let's wrap up our lessons with a quick lesson on hemming. Because that's usually the last thing you do with almost any project is go ahead and put a hem on it. So I'm gonna teach you two of my favorite, easy to sew hems. And the first one I'm going to start with is our basic twice-turned and stitched hem. Now of course, you can hem by hand as well, but I'm going to show you machine methods. So as the name suggests, this is a really easy hem that is literally turned twice. So we have to start out with a fold. So this is the wrong side of my fabric and, in this case, I decided I wanted a half-inch hem. It's turned twice, so the end result is a hem that's actually a quarter of an inch wide. But the amount of fabric it takes up is half an inch. Now this is a very common hem used on blouses and top and shirts, like the one I'm using. So this is exactly the same hem as what's on the shirt I'm wearing and this example shirt. So you use it a lot. It's very, very handy. So to start with again, you need a couple of folds. So this is the wrong side. You're always folding a hem toward the wrong side, when the right side to the wrong side. And the way that I get such nice looking folds is I use my ruler. I already pressed it in there so it doesn't want to flatten back out again, but I did want to show you how this was done. But I take my ruler and I line it up at a quarter of an inch. And then I use one of two tools. My favorite tool is, this is called a hair marker, and this is a very old-fashioned tool and you use it along your ruler and it has kind of a sharp edge to it. It doesn't cut the fabric, but it creases it. It makes it very easy to fold. Paper folders use a similar tool. So that's what I actually used to fold this. There's another gadget called a fabric folding pen. And you can use a fabric folding pen in much the same way in that you can go ahead and draw, this is gonna drip 'cause it's been laying down, but you can draw along a ruler. It creates a damp line, and then it's easy to fold and finger-press along the damp line. So that's another way that you can fold it. This is again called a fabric folding pen. So a hair marker or fabric folding pen are definitely good basic tools to have. So give that a press. So once I've pressed it, I would go ahead and roll it one more time toward the wrong side and give it another press. And of course, I've already done this to the other edge. So let's go ahead and take this to our machine. Now I know I have basically a half-inch fold here, and I have an half-inch line on my sewing machine, but I want to make sure I actually do stitch and catch the fabric. So I will go ahead and just double check that my needle's going to hit into all of the layers. So this is, thankfully, a little bit more, a little bit wider than quarter inch. So if I stitch along the quarter-inch mark, I should be fine. Now I could use an edge stitching guide, I could use a quarter-inch foot, so there's different things I could use as a stitching guide as well. I'm just going to go ahead and back stitch and just sew this down. Now of course, normally, you're going to use matching thread. I always use contrasting thread on camera so that you can see what's happening. I'm just going to take a moment and pull that thread out of the way, there we go. So we would stitch this down, if you need to, back stitch. And there we go! There is our beautiful twice-turned hem. Very, very easy to do. And of course, I would give it a final pressing just to make sure everything looked good. That's all there is to it! Super easy! Now the next thing I want to show you is easy to sew, but it does take a little bit more practice to become really proficient at it. So it does take a little bit more time to learn. And this is a blind hem, and the blind hem is something you're going to see a lot on. You see it on curtains, and you see it on a lot of store-bought clothes. And they're great for pants, especially. You want to use blind hems usually on little bit heavier fabrics. Lightweight fabrics tend not to be very blind. You tend to see the hem stitches. But it uses a foot with a blade that's more or less in the center. Now the one I'm using happens to be an adjustable blind hem foot. So I can turn this little screw, and this guide here will move back and forth, and that just helps me to set it, the foot, where I want it for the most accurate stitching. Now when you look at your sign machine stitches, if you look here on the chart, here on number 9, that is a blind hem stitch. So it kind of looks like teeth, like a vampire's something, that's a blind hem stitch. And so the blind hem stitch is designed to do straight stitches and then, every so often, to make a little zigzag. Come out and make a little bite. So I'm gonna set my machine for stitch number 9, and then go ahead and put my blind hem foot onto, snap that onto my machine. Now when I look at my prepared hem, so before you stitch a blind hem, you want to go ahead and press your hem. So you wanna have it, this is the wrong side of my fabric. So here's my hem, there's my initial fold. And this is, you know, this is a little bit wider hem. You wouldn't want to do a little quarter-inch blind hem. You want it to be a deeper hem. So this is about an inch, an inch and a quarter wide hem. Actually it's closer to two inches, but it's about an inch wide when all's said and done. So here is my twice-turned hem, so it's, my hem edge is nice and neat, this is the wrong side. So when I'm gonna stitch this, okay that's wrong side, I'm going to basically turn back the fabric. So I'm stitching on the back side of the hem and I want that little zigzag to come over and catch that fold. So this is one you definitely want to take some scraps and you want to practice if you can. Sometimes you can't. You're hemming a pair of pants and you just have to take a couple of tries, sometimes, to get it exactly right. So just be prepared. But once you have it set up, and have it all adjusted the way you want it, it's really fast and easy. And you can hem pants all day long like nobody's business. And like I said, it's great for curtains and things, too. So it's not just clothing, it's also good for, for home dec applications. So you can see my needle is actually off to the right. I just wanna make sure that it's stitching onto the hem itself. And then, the fold of the fabric, I'm gonna take a couple stitches. Okay, my needle has swung over, so I can see how far to the left it's going to go. And it looks like I might want to move my guide a little further to the left. I might want my fold- I just want it to just catch the fabric. I don't want it to take a real big bite or you'll be able to see it on the right side. So let's try that. So it stitches on the hem and every so often, there it goes. It swings over and goes to the left. Now I do need to make sure it's actually catching that fold. I might have gone a little too far. As I said, this takes a little bit of playing with it, little bit of practice, but it's totally worth it to learn how to do a blind hem. But it's best for medium and thicker fabrics. They're just easier to get a true blind hem if the fabric is a little bit thicker. Okay, let's take a look and see how we've done. So I look at this on the close-up on the overhead, the purple stitches are kind of blending in here, but there's these purple stitches along here, and every so often, you see there's a little zigzag over to the fold of the fabric. That one's a little deeper. So the goal is just barely to catch it because, remember, this is the wrong side, so when we pull it to the right side, we can see little dots, little dots of purple stitches. Now if I had used gray thread, this would probably blend in so well that you wouldn't care. But I can see a little tiny purple dots, that one's a little bigger. And so, I would need to adjust this to make that fold a little further over. Or make my stitch a little narrower. But if I used matching thread, that probably would be acceptable. You probably wouldn't even notice that hem unless somebody pointed it out. And that is why it's called a blind hem. So again, just play with it, play with your spacing and you can learn to make a very beautiful and very fast and easy hem using your blind hem foot and the blind hem stitch. Wasn't that easy? See? You can hem, no problem. And you can use both of these hems for a wide variety of different applications. And I just want to say thank you so much for joining me at the beginning of your sewing journey. I'm so excited for you to start exploring the amazing world that is sewing. There's just so many directions you can go and I'm super happy for you to be started on this adventure. So, happy sewing.