[Fritzy]

What would you suggest for hand-hemming pants made from a 60/40 cotton/polyester knit blend? They’re lightweight, similar to a t-shirt fabric. My sewing machine can’t handle knits at all.

[Nicole]

Do you have much length to spare?

Their is a technique where the hem is pressed in and then is folded up against the pants,then all three layers are stitched as one(which gives more bulk so a machine may be happier to sew it) the hem is then pressed down normally.

I will see if I can google it for you.

There is also the option of a lettuce edge finish. Liesl has a tutorial for that on her blog.

Finally,pressing a hem and then fold that hem allowance again and hand sew with some ease to allow for the stretchy fabric.

Good Luck.

[Fritzy]

Thank you for your suggestions. What I’m looking for is what stitch(es) to use to attach the hem to the garment to allow the ease required by the knitted fabric. (An overcast stitch done by hand might be needed on the raw edge first.) The owner of these pants already cut the old hem off and left one-inch to fold up for the new hem.

[Nicole]

I found this http://www.ehow.com/hems/ it may be helpful. Its the first day of school so I have to dash,sorry not be more help.

PS Would a standard blind hem sewn with ease work?

[with love Heidi]

I was just reading my old sewing book (The Vouge sewing book, 1970) and it mentioned heming knits with a catchstitch (and I thought of this post). It looks very similar to a herringbone stitch but you only catch the top layer of the hem not going all the way through. There is a diagram about halfway down this page http://www.ia470.com/wardrobe/stitches.html.

[Fritzy]

Thank you for your suggestions. Yes, I did use the catch stitch and it worked out very well.