Hemming Suit Pants

Regardless of how the pictures look, these are gray pants. Not brown, not blue. That being said, I did these at all different times of the day, so there’s all sorts of different lighting. Moving on. My hubby is short. I’m short. Our kids are doomed. He got a suit for Christmas. It was unhemmed, and WAY too long! So, I had him try them on with the shoes he would most likely wear, and then pinned them where he likes them to fall, which is right about where the sole starts. I always use safety pins so that they won’t fall out when they’re rustled all over, and hopefully won’t poke anyone.

After he did that, I measured with a tape measure along the inseam to make sure they would end up the same length. That’s kind of important. A lot of pants aren’t the same exact length. They may only be slightly different, but one leg is usually longer than the other, so you can’t measure from the bottom up. Once that measurement is good, check the outside seam. Just to make sure. Then, I press everything really good to show him all things will lay, and I re-safety pin it and have him try it on. He decided he wanted it shorter, so I folded it up the amount he wanted, which was about an inch, and pinned it, pressed it, and made him try it on again.

That’s the key, keep trying things on before you go to lots of work for nothing. That’d be frustrating, eh? See the pins on the inside of the pants? That was the first pinning after press, and then he wanted them shorter, so I created the cuff look. Comprende? Okay, this is where I did an experiment that didn’t work, so I’ll show you that and then show you what I really did. I thought I could just sew them on my machine, going along the top of the cuff line to press it down. So I sewed it.

And then when I turned it back up, it looked really weird. And flat. And not cuff like, so I undid that. What did work was a blind stitch every 1/3”-1/2” on the inside catching the cuff at the top.

I did that all on the bottom. Now, I did another mess up. The first time around, I didn’t unpick the side seams like you can see in that picture. I just sewed the bottom of the pants on with a blind stitch, and when I went to press them, they weren’t flat. Duh. Pants taper. I should have realized that. So, unpick that I did. This time, I unpicked all the way down to the cuff seam, and then pinned everything down uber-flat.

And then carefully hand-sew it so it would lay flat. I lined up the middle press line too.

And made him try them on again. Then, I pressed things flat. The picture still shows puckers because guess what? I’m not a professional seamstress/tailor/what have you.

I did my best, and I’ll try to add a picture of the hubster wearing his newly hemmed pants. He’s just glad they finally got done. Hey it’s less than a year, since it’s not Christmas yet! And we have moved twice since he got them. So yes, it’s intimidating, but the most important thing is to start. I messed up at least 3 times, but they’re finished and wearable, and no one will notice if there’s a stitch or 2 that shows or a few puckers. Know what I mean? Who’s looking at his feet?