Sustainability Month: Letting A Hem Down
One of our favorite ways to extend the life of a garment is to let the hem down. It's a great solve for pants, shorts, skirts and dresses, when the waist still works but the length is getting short. Here we take a well-loved pair of our canvas trousers, and are able to get an extra inch and a half in length out of them.
When we designed the canvas trouser, we wanted them to last more than one season and adjustability was integral to the design— the cut, the back cinch and the wide hem, all leave lots of room for growing kids.
Only a few tools are needed, and if you don't have a sewing machine, you can follow along our hand stitch technique below!
Here's What You'll Need:
Steps:
1. Turn pants inside out - in case you catch the fabric during the seam ripping, it won't be on the outside of the pants.
2. Use the seam ripper or small scissors to take out the hem.
3. Once the seam is out, steam iron the entire hem.
4. Measure how far down you would like the hem to sit, and mark it (we marked it using a pin).
5. The remaining fabric under the pin (from pin to edge of fabric) -- can be turned up twice. To do that, you would divide the remaining length in half and fold it up twice, so that the edge of the fabric is encased in the second fold. Or, to keep it very simple, eyeball it/leave enough fabric to complete a hem. If you can only turn it up once, that's okay too!
6. Iron the hem to set it in place.
7. Knot thread and begin to stitch along the hem. Starting and ending at the inside seam is best. We chose to do a blind stitch.
8. Knot off the end, and iron one more time.
9. Done! We encourage you to embrace the worn look of a turned down hem - it tracks the growth of your child :).
