I have bought a LOT of jeans for myself (and my kids) from thrift stores over the years, which has probably saved me thousands of dollars! But one of the things I’ve always struggled with is getting them the right length. Because let’s face it, if you have to do a DIY hemming job on jeans, it’s going to be obvious to everyone who sees them. Even if you can find some of that signature tan/gold thread…(believe me I’ve tried!) But after you learn this hemming trick that Kaitlyn is sharing with us about today you’ll never have that problem again! Trust me, it’s a game changer! :-)
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Kaitlyn writes………. I have seen tutorials for this hemming method floating around Pinterest for a couple of years now. I’ve pinned it multiple times but have never gotten around to actually fixing my pile of too-long jeans. I am a novice seamstress and knew that I would somehow manage to mess up even one of the easiest of sewing tasks. When I finally put this post on our blog calendar I knew I would have to conquer my fear of the sewing machine and I’m so glad I did. This method is very simple, even for the most timid of seamstresses. Now I can finally stop rolling up all of my jeans!
How to Hem Your Jeans…the Easy Way
Start by trying on the jeans to figure out where you want to hem them. I recommend putting on the shoes you will wear with the jeans most often so you can see what length looks best with them.
A general rule for skinny jeans is to hem them at the top of your ankle. You want a little bit of skin to show between the bottom of the hem and the top of your shoe. Straight leg jeans look best at the bottom of the ankle and bootcut and flare jeans should be about 1/4-1/2 inch off the ground.
Fold the hem up then take the jeans off and pin the hem in place.
UPDATE: After reading some of your comments I realized I left a very important note out of this tutorial! When you fold up the hem of your jeans the new length will be in position “1” not in position “2.” Remember that when determining where to sew or your jeans might end up much shorter than you meant them to be.
When you’re pinning, make sure to line up the side seams of your jeans.
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Now it’s time to sew! You can use whatever thread you would like because the new seam won’t show.
Remove the front piece of your sewing machine so that the hem of the jeans will fit around your machine. That might seem totally obvious to a lot of you but I didn’t know that little trick until today. I told you I’m a novice. ;-)
Carefully sew the new seam right below the original hem.
For some reason when I originally read other tutorials for this method I thought you were supposed to sew right on top of the original seam. So I did that on my first try and it did not look right (as you can see!) Then I had the joyful experience of ripping out that seam.
Make sure you don’t make the same mistake I did! See the white arrow above? THAT is where you sew.
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Once you finish sewing the new seam you can fold the excess fabric up into your pant leg or you can cut it off. It’s really just personal preference. I do recommend trying the jeans on before you cut off any fabric just to make sure you like the new length.
If you do cut the excess off you’ll want to use some fray check on the edge or a zigzag stitch. One word of caution – it is a pain to do a zig-zag stitch on skinny jeans! The ones I hemmed were very skinny and just barely fit around my machine. So it was very difficult to feed them through my machine and keep my stitch in a straight line.
You can tell from my mangled zig-zag stitch that I was only barely successful. ;-) No worries though….that part won’t ever show!
Finally, turn the edge back under so you can see the original hem. Then iron the hem down. This step makes a huge difference! Before I ironed mine I didn’t feel like it had turned out that well. But once the little bit of extra fabric was ironed down you could barely tell I had done anything.
And there you have it! If you look really close you can tell that there is a bit of a fold right above the hem but nobody would be able to see it from far away.
Hemmed without looking hemmed! Success!
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This method is so clear and works so well. My husband is very pleased. Thank you for including a video. Was easier for me to understand.
I wonder how many people found their jeans are now way too short. If you fold the jeans so that the fold is the now desired length and then stitch at the old hemline, think about it. they are now too short. Perhaps there is another step to take that has been omitted from the instructions?
You have to divide the amount they need to be shortened IN HALF. For example, if you need to hem your pants 4″, you fold them up 2″. Also, after pinning them in place but BEFORE doing any sewing, try them on to make sure you have the finished length you want.
I do not know if this is obvious to others but I have to ask. Is this method suitable only for jeans? Can I use it to pants made from other fabric?
You can use it on any pants!
At last a way to shorten my hubby’s jeans!! I always buy them as short as I can find then still need to shorten by an inch or more!
[…] How To Shorten Jeans But Keep Their Store-Bought Look […]
I had to kind of chuckle at something you said. “… nobody would be able to see it from far away”. While I was growing up, my mom sewed all of my clothes. And I can still hear her say about the occasional flaw “no one will see this on a galloping horse” (myself being that galloping horse, of course). LOL
Ha ha I love that!
A quick sewing hint: When you pin an area that’s going to be sewn on the sewing machine, it works better to place the pins at a 90 degree angle to the line of sewing. Placing the pins at 90 degrees, you can either sew over them or easily pull them out before the sewing machine needle gets to the pin. Personally, if I were sewing these jeans, I would take 5 minutes and quickly hand-baste the proposed line of machine sewing in a contrasting color thread. Basting holds everything together so that you can focus on perfecting the line… Read more »
I’ve done this a number of times. It works great. However, they will fray if you cut them off so you need to overcast or use Fraycheck as Jillian suggests. I, too, sew on top to keep them hem in place better. It’s called “stitching in the ditch”.
To get your stitching as close to the original hem as possible you can use a zipper foot. The needle goes on the outside of the foot not the inside, so when you use it, it will be only moving along the “leg” portion of the fabric, not straddling the hem and the leg fabric. Just make sure you move the position of your needle to the correct side of the foot! (When you see a zipper foot this will hopefully make sense; I can see how this would make NO sense if you have not seen one of these!)… Read more »
On skinny jeans, the hem is smaller than the upper leg, how do you adjust it.