How to Cut Off Old Hems

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Part of the video series: How to Hem Pants

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Summary: Save money on alterations and hem pants by yourself. Our expert will show you how to cut off old hems in this free sewing video.

Views: 6,786 | Tags: sew, clothing, pants, tailoring, tailor, hem, hems, hemming, clothes, sewing

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About the Expert

Andrew Boyd Andrew Boyd has been volunteering his skills as a fashion design coordinator for local theater productions, fashion shows, independent films, and various loca... read more

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by pinklady

This would be much better if you used a light colored background under the dark-colored pants. Dark on dark is difficult to see.

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Video Transcript

How to Cut Off Old Hems

Hi this Andrew on behalf of Expert Village.com and in this next clip I am just going to be showing you how to cut off the original hem that is on the cuff of men’s slacks and the reason you would do this is because if you needed to re-hem the pants to a different length is the most common reason. Other reasons could be that you want to increase the fashion of the pants by showing off the hem stitch in which case it will be necessary for you to re-stitch the cloth and a lot of the times the hem that is already there can get in the way of that. So it is really simple. All you need to do is find ideally the anchor stitch that the hem is attached to and you can do that by just following along the hem line and finding usually a anchor stitch is stitched into the crease of the pants because that is where the fiber of the material overlaps, so that is where it is the strongest. And if you find it there that is where you can cut and if not, you can really cut anywhere along. You will just have to un-string two sides. So what you want to do is you want to find the part of the pants that you want to cut and then just go in with scissors. You want to cut the knot that it is attached to. Once you do that, I usually like to take a hemming pin. You take a pin and you go into various parts of where the thread is coming from and you just pull it out. You continue down a line pulling it out until you get all the way to the anchor stitch or if you started with the anchor stitch until you get around to the end knot. Once you do you will have the hem string attached to the seam of the pants and you will also have your hem completely undone. That is how you remove the original hem from men’s slacks cuff.