Hem Jeans The Easy Way
I am a very short woman! ( 5 ft. ) No matter where I buy my jeans or pants, they are almost always too long. I recently found a neat way to hem pants that involves no cutting and it is sooo easy. Best of all, you can’t tell that they have been hemmed because you keep the original hem.
I always disliked the look of my jean hem when I cut off the bottoms and hemmed them up. It just takes away the character of an original jean hem. I am going to run through the steps for this technique. It is called a French hem. The jeans that I am hemming in the photos are a pair that I bought at the local Goodwill store. (Being thrifty!)
Step 1: Try on your jeans with the shoes that you will most likely be wearing with them. Cuff up the bottoms of your jeans to the length that you like to wear them. Put a pin in each leg to hold your cuff in place and carefully remove your jeans.
Step 2: Measure the width of your cuff. From the bottom of the original hem to the folded edge where you cuffed your jeans. My measurement was 2 1/4″. I need these jeans to be shorted by 2 1/4″. See photo below:
Step 3: Now divide that figure in half. My figure of 2 1/4″ divided by two is 1 1/8″. Fold, measuring your cuff to your new figure, mine is 1 1/8″ ( DO NOT INCLUDE THE ORIGINAL HEM WHEN MEASURING AND FOLDING IN THIS STEP! ) and pin in place. Measure and pin all the way around the leg. See photo below:
Step 4: Attach your zipper foot to your sewing machine if you have one and make sure your needle is in the right position so that you do not hit the zipper foot. Also, remove the free arm attachment if applicable.
Now stitch all the way around the leg as close to the edge of the original hem as you possibly can with out actually sewing on it. Be very careful and go slowly over the side seams. They are very thick and going to fast can cause a broken needle! See photos:
Step 5: Now turn your newly created hem to the inside and iron. See photos:
Step 6: Carefully top stitch around the leg just to the left of the new seam that you just created. This makes the hem lay better. See photo:
Step 7: Now would be a good time to try your jeans back on and make sure that you are happy with the length. If not, rip out seams and try again. If you are happy with the results, repeat steps 1-6 for the other leg.
Step 8: Now you can either leave the excess material inside your jeans as is and just fold or iron it up after washing, or trim it off. I use fusible hemming tape an fuse the material up toward the waist on the inside. See photos:
Jeans on left are cut and hemmed, the pair on the right are hemmed following the steps above.
You are done! Now you have a professional looking hem on your jeans… No one will ever know that you hemmed them. : ) I hope I have explained the steps clearly. Leave a comment and let me know how it worked for you!
11 Responses to “Hem Jeans The Easy Way”
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I don’t understand step 3–will that make the “folded” part 4 thicknesses when you sew?
Could you explain this step again?
I’ll try to explain… you should only be sewing through 2 thicknesses in step 3. (except when you go over the seams)
After measuring how much you need to hem and divide by 2… you are really just turning up a cuff on your jeans and sewing very close to the original hem but not actually catching it. The original hem will still be your new hem when you are done.
See if the photos in steps 4 and 5 will help you to see what has been done.
Now when you get to step 6, you will be top stitching through 4 thicknesses. I did not mention in the post, but you will want to use a denim needle or one suitable for thick fabric.
Let me know if this is still un-clear.
Thank you for this post. It worked perfectly!
Thanks Melissa! I am so happy that you found this little tutorial helpful. I just hemmed a pair of jeans today. I am always pleased with the result.
This is great! And your hems look wonderful too!
Excellent! I too have to hem just about every pair of pants I buy. This will make it much easier. Thank you!
This was a wonderful tutorial! Thank you! I hemmed my daughter’s jeans tonight and they turned out great!
I had 3 pairs of jeans to shorten for my teen-age daughter. I thought I was going to have to take them to a tailor, but I tried your method and I did it!! Thanks so much for explaining this process in such an easy to understand manner. I have a hard time with instructions, even when there are pictures, but your method was so easy. I even youtubed some videos and ended up more confused. Thanks for sharing your time and talents with the world! Appreciated.
Thanks so much, I have always wanted to do this and knew “how” just not how to measure it correctly. Thanks again!
I also have one question. Will this work on really flare legged jeans?
It worked beautifully, and SO much easier! Thank you for sharing this with us!