Pin it, then look, THEN sew
Okay. We're starting hems, and before we touch a needle to a single pair of pants, I want to talk about the step everybody skips.
Pinning. Then looking. THEN sewing.
Most bad hems — and I mean the kind where it puckers, or it hangs crooked, or it's a half inch shorter on one side than the other — happen because somebody pinned it fast and started sewing before they really looked at what they'd done. The pinning isn't the boring part you get through. The pinning IS the work. The sewing is just making the pins permanent.
Why hems go wrong
A hem is just fabric folded up and tacked in place. That sounds simple, and it is, but "simple" and "hard to mess up" are not the same thing. Here's why: when you fold fabric up onto itself, you're asking two layers to sit flat and even, all the way around a leg or a curtain or a skirt, and your eye is not as good a measuring tool as you think it is. Especially under normal room lighting at 9 p.m., which — we'll get to that.
Step one: measure, don't eyeball
Try the garment on, or on the person, if that's possible. Fold the hem up to where you actually want it to end, and pin it there — not where you think it'll end up after you sew, right where you want the finished edge. Use a few pins straight across, evenly spaced, maybe every three or four inches.
If you can't try it on a body, lay it flat on a table and measure from the existing hemline up, the same distance, at several points around. Don't trust "it looks about right" from one spot. Check it at the side seams too, because fabric can hang differently there than at the front.
Step two: pin it all the way around
Pin the whole hem before you sew any of it. Not just the front. All the way around, even the parts you can't see easily, even the back where nobody's looking. This is where people cut corners and it's exactly where it shows later.
Pin perpendicular to the fold, points tucked in so you don't stab yourself reaching around the fabric later — and you will reach around it, so tuck them in now.
Step three: STOP. Look.
This is the step everybody wants to skip and it's the one I will not let you skip.
Once it's fully pinned, stand back. Look at the whole hem, all the way around. Is it even? Does one side look longer? Pick it up and let it hang if it's a garment that hangs — pants, a skirt, a robe. Look at it the way you'd look at it walking down the hall at church, not the way you look at it lying flat on a table, because flat and hanging are two different pictures.
Get down at eye level with it if you can. Walk around it. I know that sounds like a lot for a hem. It is not a lot. It's the ten seconds that saves you from unpicking the whole thing later, and I have unpicked a hem I already sewed because it was one thread-width off and I could see it. Nobody else could see it. William told me nobody could see it. I could see it, so I redid it.
Step four: THEN sew
Only after you've looked — really looked, walked around it, checked it against itself — do you start sewing. Use a slip stitch (or ladder stitch, same thing, don't let anybody make you feel dumb for not knowing that) to tack the fold down, working small stitches that barely catch the outer fabric so they don't show on the right side. Take your time along each pinned section, and pull each pin only right before you sew past it, not all at once at the start. That way nothing shifts on you while you're not looking.
A confession, because it's relevant
Zachary once needed a costume cape hemmed at 9 p.m., the night before he needed it. I did it. I also told him, while I was doing it, that this is not how we plan ahead, and that lead time is a real thing, and that Grandma is not always going to be up at 9 p.m. with a threaded needle. Both of those things were true at the same time. I finished the cape. I also meant every word of the lecture.
The reason I bring it up here: rushing is exactly when you skip the pin-then-look step. You're in a hurry, you pin it fast, you start sewing before you've really checked it, and that's how a costume cape ends up crooked at 9:45 when the kid's already got his shoes on. I looked at that hem before I sewed it even at 9 p.m. Especially at 9 p.m. That's when you need the habit most, because your eyes are tired and you want to be done.
One honest caution
Working a hem often means the fabric's bunched up in your lap or under your arm while you sew around and around. Watch where your other hand is relative to the needle, especially if you're tucking fabric with your free hand as you go. It's an easy spot to catch a finger, not because the needle's dangerous exactly, but because you stop paying attention to it once the rhythm sets in.
Before next time
Find something in your house with a hem that's coming loose or hanging wrong — pants, curtains, whatever you've got — and just pin it. Don't sew it yet. Pin it, stand back, look at it from a few angles, and see what you notice. We'll sew it together next time. 🌷
- V