How To Handsew A Blind Hem Stitch

There are a multitude of reasons why you should incorporate hand sewing into your daily sewing repertoire. From simple repairs to decorative stitching, hand sewing can make the world of difference in any design. With the Blind Hem Stitch in particular, you have the ability to join two pieces of fabric with practically invisible seams! You can use the Blind Hem stitch on a number of fabrics (like twill, canvas and cotton!) to hem dresses, pant legs, sleeves, and more that need an invisible hem. With this handy tutorial, every sewist will be sure to add this to their arsenal of sewing skills for years to come!

When learning about Blind Hem stitching, it’s best to begin with a garment you would like to hem! However, if you aren’t too confident in your hand sewing skills just yet, it’s also smart to use muslin or some of your own scrap fabric laying around. So grab your scissors, thread, sewing needle, iron, and your ‘blind’ ambition, and let’s get to work! 🙂

This step is very simple, but I can understand the trouble of actually threading your needle through the eye of your needle can be tedious for some, because it is for me! With my terrible eyesight, it’s a wonder I was ever able to hand sew. Luckily, with Mood’s hand needle threader, I’m usually able to get started right away. This little miracle tool makes my life so much easier, and threading my needle is a breeze. Of course if you don’t have that handy, you can also use a little trick my mother taught me! Just simply lick your thumb and twist the thread so it’s “sharp” enough to pass through the eye of your hand needle. You can even use a little beeswax too! Once you get your thread in, you have the option of doubling up the thread, or keeping it a single thread with a knot for more “invisibility”!

Next, we will be inserting our newly threaded needle into the fold of our predetermined hem. When you do insert your needle, be sure that the knot we made isn’t visible and hidden inside our fold.

Pins would be incredibly useful here, to help keep the fold intact while we fiddle with our hand sewing. I know from experience that hems have the tendency to become skewed if we aren’t attentive to these first few steps. The last thing you want is to seam rip all of your hard hand sewn work. So if you’re a beginner, use your pins wisely!

Our next step will be simply “picking” one, to two threads from the wrong side of your fabric. The first few threads picked shouldn’t be too far away from where you initially inserted your needle. Once you’ve done that, pull the thread towards you to tighten!

Next, you can reinsert your needle into the fold once more, and slide it through the fold. The dots in the figure above should indicate where your thread should be underneath the fold, completely invisible! You should be mindful of slowly removing the pins you’ve placed as you reach them.

Another tip is to be sure to keep the same even tension when hand sewing, to keep your fabric from puckering, or becoming too loose while you work along your hem. Your stitch pattern should start to look like upside down “Vs’, so keep it up!

We’ve reached the home stretch! Once you’ve repeated steps 4-5, the next step is to simply create a knot at the end of your last stitch. This can be as simple as looping in the needle through the last stitch before tightening. You can repeat the knotting technique for a double knot if you want more stability, depending upon the weight of your fabric. Just be sure to get it as close as possible to the fold!

Once you’ve finished off your last stitch with a teeny tiny knot, you can trim off any excess thread from there with your scissors. Then simply press and iron out any creases. Flip your work over to the right side, and admire all of your handmade stitches! They should be even in length, and be practically invisible at a glance.  Congratulations on hand sewing your Blind Hem stitch!

I hope this tutorial helped you. Do you have any tips to make your hand sewing easier? Have you tried any of the methods above? Let me know in the comments!