A hem is a finished edge, where you fold the raw edge of your fabric under, such as you’d find at the end of your trouser legs, dress, sleeves etc.

I am not going to talk about hemming by hand nor am I going to cover using a blind hem stitch. These are both valuable ways to hem but not within the remit of this course. Instead I am going to teach you how to make a machine stitched hem, with a visible line of stitching.

The rule of thumb is, the thicker your fabric, the bigger your hem. You can make a tiny hem in a chiffon type fabric but that won’t work in a chunky denim. Of course you can play with perceptions and hem sizes and there is no actual rules, the fashion police won’t lock you up, but just remember that tiny hems are super fiddly and chunky hems look great on a canvas tote bag!

If you are following a pattern it will often tell you what the hem depth ought to be, but of course you can ignore this especially if your garment is a teeny bit too long, and making a bigger hem would solve that, etc. Otherwise experiment, find out what your favourite hem is for which project.

Let’s say a pattern calls for a 4cm hem. What I tend to do is draw a line on a piece of paper (with a straight edge please!), 4 cm away from the edge. I then place this marked piece of paper up against the edge of my fabric and copy the 4cm mark on to my fabric, Again make sure your marker is removable. I do this at say 10cm intervals if the edge of my fabric is pretty straight, a bit more often if it curves.

Once they are all marked in and I am back at your starting point, I will start folding my fabric to the wrong side on this mark. Finger press the fold down, or if your fabric won’t press easily maybe put a pin in. When again I am back at the beginning I gently unfold this hem and fold the edge of the fabric in towards the folded edge so that you now have a double folded edge, of 2cm each, 4cm in total. I would now pin this second fold in, pins perpendicular to the edge.

This is very easy on a totally straight edge. If your edge is more curved you may find you end up with some pleats, as long as you make sure these pleats are not visible at all from the right side (so not at the edge of your fold either) you can just live with these. It is because on a curved edge the bottom edge is longer than the fold, and you need to pull this excess fabric in somehow. If you are making a full circle skirt and the excess is, well, excessive, you may have to gather your edge to make it the same size as your fold! So that is why you may end up with some ruffles in your stitch line.

Once the whole hem is pinned in you can stitch. Generally you will stitch a few mm from the edge of the inside fold, and you will sew on the inside of your project (wrong side facing you). Mark this stitch line with a removable marker, chalk, with the edge of the presser foot if you can move your needle towards this edge, or do it by eye.

Finally make your stitch a little longer. If my normal stitch length is 2.5 I will hem on 3 or 3.25. It just looks nicer. Do not forget to back stitch. And don’t forget to change the colour of your thread and bobbin to match your project even if the whole thing up to now has been sewn in something a little more random. It looks way nicer if you think about this colour match. And it doesn’t have to match either, once you are confident of making neat hems you can use a contrasting colour!