How to Sew a Blind Hem Stitch

This tutorial will teach you how to sew a blind hem stitch.

Want to learn how to sew those almost invisible hems that you find on nice pairs of pants and skirts? You can do it if you have a blind stitch option on your sewing machine and a blind hem stitch foot.

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I was surprised at how easy it is. This is what my blind hem stitch foot looks like:

Start by serging or zig-zagging the bottom of your fabric to prevent fraying. Turn the pants or skirt inside out. Fold up and iron your hem in place to the desired length.

Pin the hem in place placing the point of the pin down towards the bottom fold of the hem. You will soon turn the hem to the inside so this position will make it easy to pull the pins out as you sew.

Then fold the hem under to the right side of the pants / skirt (towards the front side of the fabric) leaving a very small 1/4 inch fold visible at the bottom edge.

Place this tiny edge under the blind stitch foot on your sewing machine and line it up against the guide of the presser foot.

I like to change the default settings on my machine as shown below, but this is a matter of personal preference. I decrease the width by 1 so that the needle just barely catches the hem and I change the length to 3.5 which spaces the stitches out farther, which I’ve found helps the hem lay down better.

Then start sewing! As you sew make sure the guide stays right against the folded edge of the hem. The machine will stitch several stitches on the tiny edge of fabric, and then do a zig zag stitch over to grab the folded edge every so often. Keep an eye on things to make sure that it’s actually grabbing the folded edge. If your fabric strays from the guide you may miss a few stitches.

When you’re done, the bottom edge will look like this with almost invisible little tacks holding the hem in place.