How to Hem Pants

Elaine Terrell: Hi! I am Elaine Terrel, the owner of Elaine Terrell's Dressmaking and Alterations. Right now I am going to show you how to hem a pair of jeans. These have been marked in the back with a pin, both legs so I am going to take these jeans; I am going to use my sleeve board. I am going to slip them on there and I am going to take my iron and then I am going to press the crease in where they are pinned and that's going to be my mark for the amount to hem them. Okay, now I am going to measure that with my ruler, its two inches. On these jeans I am going to use a chalk marker which makes a nice fine white mark and I am going to mark my hemline all the way around the leg of the jean. Now generally I will copy the hem that was done originally; what we have in here is about of one inch hem but I am going to make it a little bit wider, going to make it 1 and 1/8th inches so I am going to go down from my first mark which is the hemline and I am going to make another mark at 1 and 1/8th inches from there and that is going to be my cutting line. Now I am going to take my scissors and I am going to trim right along my second line of marks, okay. Right, the next step is to take that leg and turn it inside out, put it back on your sleeve board. Now I am going to turn it up first on that hemline mark and I am going to press it in place. You just go around on the jean leg, give it some steam so you get a nice crease. Now we are going to take and we are going to turn this hem allowance under one time; now I will pin this as I go, turn under, press, move it along your board, put in a pin. Then you just continue like this all the way around the leg of the pant. Okay, now here you have your pressed under hem; now all we have to do is stitch it. Now with jeans they are stitched generally with a heavier thread and the way I deal with that is to actually stitch the legs of the jeans twice. I will just stitch it around and we will take the scissors, just clip that. Okay, this is the original denim thread and this is my hem and you can see now this stitching looks a little lighter. So you can just pass over this stitching again and that way it will look much more like the original denim thread and that's how you hem a pair of jeans. Now next I am going to show you how to hem an uneven skirt.