Adventures with Jameson and Ginger Ale: Hemming pants using the original hem

For anyone who knows me it shouldn't come as a surprise that I am short. Like really short. Pretty much any pair of pants I've ever bought have had to be rolled up or hemmed, which was getting out of hand. I mean seriously how inconvenient is it to take your jeans to get hemmed? Very, that is the answer. The solution? I've learned to do it myself!

I got a sewing machine for Christmas and have just been itching to dig into some projects. Thus far, I have made two stockings for next year (yay for after-Christmas clearance fabric), tapered a pair of jeans and a pair of khakis, and hemmed a different pair of khakis. I feel very accomplished. I frequently have to taper or tailor my jeans/pants as well because something that goes along with being short is that the legs of your pants don't fit how they're supposed to, the knee of the pants hits somewhere around my shin...no bueno. I do a super quick and probably not quality job of tapering my pants, but hey it has worked for the two pairs thus far. Simply turn them inside out, pin roughly how tight you want them, take them off, measure and draw your line making sure the pants are pinned symmetrically (seams are stretched straight), and sew along said line. Make sure to try your pants on before cutting the extra off and if they aren't fitting to your liking take the seam out and try it again.

Pin 'em up (ignore the ugly marks, I couldn't decide how
to do it...

Sew! Can you even tell where the seam is?

The real reason for this post is to show how to hem pants using the original hem, which makes them look much more professional and is actually pretty easy! I got these pants from J. Crew (in case you've forgotten, it is one of my loves in life) a few years ago for some ridiculously cheap clearance price, try like $10 or something. Anyway they are really nice chino material and fit well around the waist and legs (surprise!), but they were too long. I think I've worn them once, rolled up, but that looks unprofessional so I could only wear them casually and it was just not good, but I don't wear them enough to justify paying a professional seamstress to shorten them. Solution: do it myself! This literally took maybe 45 minutes, and I was going slow because it was my first time. You'll need a too-long pair of pants, a ruler, a pencil/marker, pins, a seam ripper, and a sewing machine with matching thread/jean thread if you are doing jeans.

The offending pants.

First things first, try them on and mark, pin, or roll up to where you want the new hem to fall. It is extremely important that you mark EXACTLY where you want the hem to be, because you're going to be cutting at that place so there's no going back once you cut off the ends of your pants. I put them on, put in a pin where I wanted them, took them off and measured how far it was. Lucky for me it was just over 2 inches so I rounded and made it an even 2 inches just for simplicity's sake. Measure and mark all the way around the pants.

Rulers are your friends!

If you want, you can connect the lines but you don't have to, rather I play a little connect-the-dots game with my scissors. Make a small slit in your pants on one of the marks, big enough to fit your scissors in, and start cutting.

Just large enough to fit in your scissors.

Snip, Snip, Snip

When you've got them cut off where you want them, take the pieces with the hem left on and cut the excess off about 1/2 inch above the original hem. You want to leave enough to be able to pin it to the pants later.

I didn't have much anyway, but just to trim it down a bit. (Sidenote:
see my pretty London mug in the background? One of my favorite
Christmas presents!)

Next, take a seam ripper and rip out the original hem. This can be tricky, especially around the other seams where it gets thick, just go slow and take it one stitich at a time if you need to. Be sure to pull out all of the threads or it will look sloppy when you try to sew over them (ask me how I know...).

My pretty, new seam ripper!

Now you need to fit your hem pieces over the pants leg. It takes some finagling, but you should be able to put the original hem on the outside and fold the rest inside the leg and make it flush with pants. Make sure the seams are lined up correctly on the ends to make it look right. Pin it in place. I found it easiest to pin as I went instead of fitting it all in and then pinning, but whatever works for you.

This is before I folded the hem back up over the pants, see the part inside?
What is outside the leg of the pants is the original hem that gets folded
up over the outside.

Probably should have ironed them...

You're read to start sewing! Use a stitch that matches the original one and try to line your machine foot up with the original seam so that you sew over the holes left where you ripped out the thread. It should work out that you can't even tell the difference. Sew all the way around, taking special care on the two side seams, they can be difficult for your needle to go through so doing it one stitch at a time is best.