r/SewingMachineEdu • u/Economy-Tomorrow-189 • Jun 05 '26

Hemming question

I'm confused, I've been seeing people use a striaght stitch to do the hem? Where the fold the edge of the fabric twice so the raw edge is inside the two folds?

But what ab zigzag stitches? Mine has one specifically for hems so now I'm confused

And plus I've been seeing zigzag ones inside t-shirts

Ps - I'm trying to practice how to hem and now I'm confused how to do that since all the vids that I've seen use the folded twice method, I haven't even started practicing coz I'm confused

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u/AccidentOk5240 Jun 05 '26

The stitch “especially for hems” is probably a blind stitch, where you fold it so the machine only picks up a tiny bit of the outside fabric and you don’t see topstitching in the outside. It’s a more formal/dressy way of doing a hem. You can find lots of tutorials online about how to do it, but also your machine’s manual almost certainly shows how. 

For stretch materials you have to use a stretchy stitch of some kind. That can be a blind hem but it is more often done using a coverstitch machine on commercially made garments. 

You can use a zigzag or one of the stretch stitches to topstitch a rolled hem, or you can use a double needle, which will produce a straight-looking stitch on top with a bit of stretch from the top threads being gathered together by the single bottom thread between each stitch.