Today we're covering the very last step of our tea dresses: hemming!
Now after all the steps we've been through to get to this stage, hemming is quite straight forward. Not long before you're going to be able to swan around wearing your new creation! So let's get started...
First of all you need to decide what length you would like your hem to be. Try it on, and if you'd like the dress shorter, work out how much you want to take off the bottom and, using chalk or a washable fabric pen, mark a horizontal line all the way around. Take care to make sure it's even all the way round, measuring up from the bottom of the dress at regular intervals. Remember to factor in hem allowance before you cut!
Once you're decided on the length, and before you cut your dress, you need to pick how you'd like to hem.
You could, as we have done, finish the raw edge using either a zigzag or overlock stitch, and then turn this edge up once and stitch it down. You will find this hem on a lot of ready to wear clothing.
As lovers of hand finishing here at Sew Over It, we have then slip stitched the hem so that it's invisible on the outside, but you could top stitch it using the sewing machine if you prefer. Much quicker, but your stitching will be visible on the outside of the dress.
Alternatively you might prefer to do a double folded hem. Turn up the raw edge by 1cm all the way around, press and then turn up again 1cm before pressing again, and stitching in place. Again, you can either slip stitch by hand or machine stitch it up.
And that's it! Finished!! Yay! It's time to put your dress straight on and spend the rest of the day swishing around with a great big smile on your face.
Next Friday we're going to do a roundup post of all the lovely dresses you have made so we would love it if you could send us a photo of yourself wearing your handmade marvel and we'll pop it up on here. You've got until Thursday 13th March to send us your picture, which you can do by emailing alex@sewoverit.com, posting on our Facebook page or sending us a link on Twitter. We will also add all these pictures to our 1940's Tea Dress Pinterest board.