I mentioned hemming men's dress pants at an angle to keep them from ending up too long or short in the comments of another post. Thanks @deforestliz for asking for an example post - it's one of those alterations I've done so frequently at work (sometimes 50 pairs of pants at a time!), I forget that not everyone is familiar with angled hems. =)
Especially with the current tapered-leg styles of men's dress pants, it's hard to get a good length hem if a pair of trousers is turned up on a line parallel to the ground. So you see a lot of men with pant hems above the back of their shoes & socks showing or the opposite extreme of double or triple breaks (or even piles of wrinkles) sitting on the shoe laces in the front. I personally (and most costume designers I've worked with) prefer a single break on the top of the shoe in front with a length that hits in the middle of the heel just above the sole in back.
In order to achieve the not-too-long-not-too-short look, pants usually need to be hemmed shorter in the front than the back. It's a much easier thing to do if you can chop off the excess hem allowance beyond 1"-1.5" turn, but with costumes, I'm usually dealing with 4" extra to an extreme 11" deep hem (those are never pretty!) that can't be cut off if the costume is going to live in stock afterwards.
So here are 3 separate examples of angled pant hems. To mark the angle, pin center front and center back of each leg at desired length (with shoes) and then angle the hem after the fitting.
First photo is a grey pair I hemmed for my husband (@rwtrekker) when he had to buy a tapered pair (not his usual style) for a wedding. The front ended up being about an inch shorter than the back to get a single break on the top of the foot. I was able to cut the extra off since they weren't a costume, so the hem is about an inch deep turn. I scooped the front more with a curved line.
Second photo is a pair of tux pants from costume stock at the opera. Straight line is easiest if the pants aren't too tapered, but if the hem is more than 2" deep all around, the inseam and outseam usually need to be split open.
Third example (reddish pair of pants) is from a rented opera and had been previously hemmed with a horizontal dart in the front at the bottom of the turn up. (I took photos as I was letting the hem down before a fitting.) It's a handy costume alteration if there's time to do it and the fabric presses out well. If the fabric holds creases too much, I usually avoid a dart as it will look extra sloppy if the hem is let down later.
Let me know if you have any questions in the comments!
#TrouserHem #sewingtips #tutorial
I spent the day priming things for paint and then I remembered to shoot a quick video. #SewingStudioBuild
I started cutting all the edges while Janet was away yesterday morning. When she got back after lunch, she pulled out a roller and started filling in. I'll put a pic below in the comments. #SewingStudioBuild
We broke for lunch and then came back with a portal ac unit plugged in to an extention cord from the house. Can't wait until they finished hooking up all the electrical and we have the mini split cooling the room for us - it was stupid humid today! #SewingStudioBuild
I thought you all might be interested to know what happened to the original treadle base on my antique Singer. This was all my husband’s doing, as he’s wanted to try this project for years. He’s gotten into woodworking this past year, so he’s got more of the skills now. The table portion is from a fold-down IKEA table that used to be my cutting table, back in the pre-kid days when I had a whole room for sewing. (It’s been living in the basement folded up for years, mostly used for garden seed storage and a few small tools.) He added the sink basin and faucet. We’re debating about me making a small curtain underneath that would hide the pipe work, while still showing the treadle base.
This project sparked another room makeover, though this one is our half-bath so it isn’t nearly as involved as our kitchen and kids’ rooms have been. Several of the other items in the picture came from a couple of local antique shops, though the old milk crate belonged to my husband’s ...
I haven't been sewing since a big project finished about a month ago - I'm just burned out (will post photos at some point).
After a couple exhausting weekends of installing a new dishwasher because my 29 year-old mechanical stopped rinsing properly 😥, I was motivated enough to start reorganizating the rest of the kitchen. It's always a domino effect, and I'm still not finished, but I washed the curtain I made a million years ago and properly dusted/washed all the pitchers and decorations on the window shelves. (I even polished the formica tabletop!) So the window area was photo-worthy.
Back when made the curtain, I was smart and used velcro instead of a curtain rod. I put a male sticky-back strip on the top of the mini-blind housing and sewed a soft female strip of regular velcro onto the curtain. The curtain itself is all one piece gathered to that strip of velcro - easy to pull off and throw in the laundry (not that i overcome laziness and actually wash it regularly but whatever).
I ...
Been so busy, I forgot to share photos of the final Paquita costume! Well, most of these photos are “semi-final”—after the photoshoot and first dress rehearsal, his teacher asked me to tweak the front seams below the waist so they would stay close to the body (not flare out like in the photoshoot) when his arms were up. This involved re-doing the bottom trim but the final result was worth it, so! The full sleeves were not as dramatic as we thought they were going to be, but still a nice effect. I really love the elbow sleeve detail and maybe will post more about it later.
