How to Hem a Dress

How to Hem a Dress

How to Hem A Dress: Knowing how to hem a dress is very important for making adjustments to dresses that you purchase because they are one-of-a-kind, but don’t quite fit right. Thankfully, it’s easy to do, so let’s take a look at a step-by-step guide.

Get Your Materials

The first thing you need to do is get all the materials you need for dress hemming. You should have thread, scissors, measuring tape, tailors chalk, pins, and a fabric marker if you don’t have tailors chalk. You’ll also need that all-important sewing needle, as well as thread that matches the color of the dress you want to hem. 

Choose Your Length

Work out how much you want to take the dress up by and pin it roughly in place. Look in the mirror to make sure it fits.

Preparing the Hem

Take off the dress and turn it inside out. Measure from the current hem to your new length, unpin it, and lay the dress flat. Mark out the same measurement around the hem, then measure about an inch down and mark it around. 

You should get enough fabric to fold it twice to protect the new edge. Trim off the excess fabric and keep it for other projects if you want. Turn your hem up to meet the new line and pin the fold in place. 

Lots of people try the dress on at this point to make sure it fits right for them. Just watch out for the pins. 

Stitching Your Hem

You’ve got a few options for your hem. You can use a running stitch or an invisible stitch - both of these will give you some much needed durability. However, a backstitch is neat and tidy, so it’s usually recommended. 

To start a backstitch, take your needle and push it into the point of your fabric where you want to start. Next, bring the needle back through both layers of your fabric just in front of your previous stitch. The closer you can get your stitches together, the stronger it is. Just for the first stitch, go back over it to secure your thread in place and stop it from unraveling.

After that, push your needle back into your fabric. You need to aim between where the needle came in and out of the fabric. Now, take your needle and bring it up through the fabric, keeping the same distance as you go forward. Keep these stitches as you go, checking the other side of your fabric to make sure that they are even. 

Finishing Off

Finishing off is quite easy. You need to do a double stitch where your stitching ends. Knot your thread at the end and cut any excess away. Take all of the pins out of the hem and then lightly iron it to get a secure, professional hem. 

Final Thoughts 

As we can see, it’s quite easy to hem a dress. It may seem slightly awkward to try for the first time, but you will get better with practice. Once you get the hang of it, it’s so simple to make any dress alterations you need.