This article is for all willing men who need invisible hems .
I'm going to teach you today how to hem your own pants.
What hem are we talking about?
Invisible hems, visible cuffs, New York cuffs , rolled hems, there are many ways to connect pants and shoes. The choice is made according to the morphology, the nature of the shoes, the clothing and the desired style but also the environment . Observe stylish men walking down the street: in Milan they like to show off their socks while in Chicago the trend is to cover them completely.
Watteau's "Gilles" - painting exhibited at the Louvres
Regardless, in the era of ready-to-wear, honest men are forced to shorten their pants to fit their own size .
Not all pants will fall exactly at the right length for you. Chinos BonneGueule
Next, you will learn how to alter pants using an invisible hem like that of the model in the photo above. To illustrate this article, I am going to work on gray flannel pants that I have just bought in London by detailing, step by step, a more solid and elegant way than your seamstress to make an invisible hem.
The sewing kit
First of all, know that every gentleman worthy of the name has, in his survival sewing equipment:
- a dozen embroidery needles as fine as possible,
- a small box of pins ,
- A thimble ,
- a small pair of sewing scissors ( never cut anything other than thread or fabric with them)
- spools of thread in basic colors, as thin and strong as possible
- a tape measure .
Important foreword for the rest:
- the face of a fabric is its part which is visible, the reverse is a contrario the interior part;
- the weft is the structure by which the threads are woven together to obtain the fabric.
The method for making your own hem
Now that you have the finest needle possible and a thread in the color of your pants to alter, it's time to roll up your sleeves and get started.
Put that needle down first or you're going to hurt yourself. Put on your pants, adjust your belt properly ( at the right height on your hips), then tuck the excess fabric inside one leg , wrong sides together, up to the desired hem height. The fabric against your leg should not be wrinkled. Clean, the fold must be perpendicular to the axis of the leg. Using a pin at the front and another at the back, roughly prick on the right side so that the fabrics stay in place. This summary marking will serve as a standard . You can take off your pants and turn them inside out, carefully, otherwise you will really hurt yourself. Now work on a wide support and under a strong light source.
First of all, take measurements of the length of fabric that you have folded around the entire perimeter of the leg opening. You will get values that differ slightly by plus or minus a centimeter. Take the average and write down this figure somewhere, this will be the reference measurement that you will apply exactly on both legs.
Remove the two pins that hold the fabrics in place and place new ones vertically (in line with the leg), taking care to systematically respect the reference length. A dozen pins are enough to hold the two fabrics perfectly against each other. Now, regularly arrange the pins horizontally all along the tangent to the fold.
Be careful to catch as little fabric as possible in these pins so that, when you have removed all the vertical pins , you can unfold the leg completely without there being any creases. This will allow you to do the reverse a little later.
With your pair of sewing scissors, cut the fabric so that 6 centimeters remain after the pin line . This length constitutes a safety margin if the fabric were to shrink because you did not follow Benoît's care advice .
While you're at it, put the excess fabric aside, it will be welcome when you need to repair an accidental tear. About my pants, as you can see in the photo, I didn't have to cut the fabric because there were approximately 6 centimeters to remove.
I never rip my pants accidentally anyway. The rumor that I have already cracked one on stage is nothing but a lie.
Fold the fabric at the pins, wrong sides together, and fold the inside part again on itself to obtain a triple thickness of 3 centimeters . Hold the structure together using a new set of vertical pins. No joke: this is the moment when we really hurt ourselves and swear at those damn horizontal pins.
So feel free to remove them as you fold the fabric over itself. This interior thickness is called the reverse .
It's time to get the needle you prepared at the beginning of this post. Of course, you will never thread a piece of thread larger than your arm, that's the rule. By the way, if you haven't found a thread in the exact color of your pants, choose the closest, darkest color.
To mark the start, make a stopping stitch on the right side of the reverse side: stitch several times in the same place (3 or 4 stitches are enough).
The slipper stitch is the keystone of the blind hem . This stitch allows you to hold two fabrics together in the least visible way possible. Keep the following diagram in mind to remember the general principle of this sewing stitch which is a stitch that progresses in the opposite direction to the stitching direction.
For example, a right-handed seamstress who makes a slipper stitch holds the needle in his right hand, stitches from right to left, takes the thread to the right, stitches again from right to left, etc. The above diagram is discussed from the right-handed perspective, but for those untrustworthy left-handed people, it is sufficient to apply axial symmetry.
In the case of the invisible hem, the slipper stitch is made up of a “small” stitch on the wrong side (blue in the diagram) of the leg and a “large” stitch which crosses the reverse. The small point means that the needle passes under as few threads as possible in the weft (red mark below). Conversely, the large dot indicates that the needle passes entirely through the weft of the two layers of the reverse.
Above all, remember the golden rule: never tighten the stitch to avoid marking the right side of the pants with an unsightly line on the right side of the leg such as below.
(note from Benoit: this is the first time I have seen such shoes!)
This requires working with a flexibility that you will acquire through practice. Moreover, check that you do not mark the back of the pants by turning the leg over after a few stitches. Don't hesitate to start again if you are not satisfied.
If you want the hem to be very sturdy, space your stitches an inch or less apart. If you prefer to go fast, you can go up to 2 centimeters.
Once you've gone all the way around the hem and are back to the original point, finish with a tie stitch.
Proceed with ironing . Be careful, even if you respect the temperature indicated on the label, I strongly advise you to iron the pants by placing a cloth between the iron and the fabric. This will prevent it from becoming irreversibly shiny .
If you want to apply an age-old ninja technique, you can dampen the cloth before running the iron over it . This so-called “patmouille” method represents the best way to iron with steam - moreover, in haute couture, it is out of the question to send the steam directly with an iron.
After repeating the same operation on the other leg applying the same reference length, you obtain this result: no mark of shrinkage of the pants is perceptible.
Well done, your mission has been brilliantly accomplished.
