Create a Blind Hem Stitch With Your Home Machine

You don’t need a blind hem machine to do a blind hem stitch! In this free video lesson from Bluprint sewing instructor Angela Wolf, she shows you how to use your own home sewing machine to hem your pants without having a single stitch show! Check it out, then check out her sewing class, Tailoring Ready to Wear and receive 25% off!

Video transcript:

Hello, this is Angela Wolf. I’m a sewing instructor on Bluprint.com. In this quick lesson, I’m going to show you how to do a blind hem with your sewing machine, not a blind hem machine.

Have you ever bought pants in a store? That’s why I have the tags on here, these are ready-to-wear. And you can’t even hardly see that stitching, it’s the same color as the fabric. But here’s the key: from the outside—this is a pant hem—you can’t see those stitches. It’s perfect! So how do you get that with a home sewing machine? Let me just show you here.

Pretty much every sewing machine comes with a blind hem foot, and a blind hem stitch. Open your sewing machine manual if you can’t find it. But most of us don’t read that. Though, if you can’t find the stitch, go take a peak. But here you go. Let’s just see this is the hem, and I’m going to show you the concept of this. Here’s the foot. It has a blade on the back. Look at it from the side. It has kind of a weird blade. So let’s just pretend this is your pants, and this is your hem. This is your seam allowance. The concept of this whole thing is that you’re going to stitch. And as you stitch, this blade will run along the fold. And most of your stitches will be here in your seam allowance, right on the edge. And what it does, is it stitches and it does a little zig-zag. And that little zig-zag, you just want it to grab just a touch of fiber of fabric. And back over, stitch, stitch over, just like that. That’s the concept of it. If you go too far, you end up being able to see the stitches from the right side of the garment.

Now let me just show you how this works. Put the presser foot on. Perfect. So here’s our fabric. I’m just using a swatch of fabric so you can kind of see how this goes. So let’s just pretend that this is the right side of your pants. There’s your hem. And there’s your hem allowance. So all you do is you take your fingers like this, and flip. Okay? And this is what you’re going to be sewing along. I usually do a few pins here. I’m going to pin really close to the edge and flip it back over so you can see what this will look like from the right side of your garment. You’re going to think this really weird, but, actually, it’s not. So let’s fold this back out. Remember this is the inside of your pants. There’s your hem. There’s your hem allowance. What does it look like from the right side of the fabric? This. I know what you’re thinking: “I’m going to end up with some goofy stitches.” You’re not.

So let’s go back. Here we go. Let’s put it in the sewing machine. You want to align this lever right here with the fold of your fabric. Lower your presser foot, and then just start stitching. I’m using a different color here, and I actually have the zig-zag a little bit wider so you can seee it. See how that just kind of goes zig-zag. It’s just grabbing just a little bit of the fiber in the fabric to show the blind hem. Just a few more stitches here, and let’s see what we ended up with.

Again, this is the inside of your pant leg. Look at that. See how that stitched? It’s kind of weird, isn’t it? So the majority of your stitches is actually on your hem allowance at the very edge. This is the part of your pant leg that is just gathering that little, itty-bitty zig-zag. So, lets see on the inside. This is what the inside of your pant leg looks like. Nobody’s going to see that except for you, but it’s not too bad looking. I would probably serge this edge first, and then do the blind hem, just to give it a professional finish.

So let’s go to the right side of the garment. Here we go. Now, remember I told you I had the triangle a little bit wider so you can see it? If I had narrowed that just a little bit, and you just do that with the width of your stitch, you wouldn’t even be able to see that. And, of course, you pick a thread that matches your pants. It looks greats, and once I press that, you wouldn’t even see that. I would narrow that stitch just a little bit, and it would be perfect.

Again, this is Angela Wolf. And for more tips like this on altering your clothes, or even rehabing clothes that you buy in a resale shop, join me on my online class, Tailoring Ready to Wear, on Bluprint.com!