Shortening clothing

Dear users, dear authors,
how can you properly shorten clothing?

For skirts, dresses, and pants, the person who is supposed to wear the garment should try it on to determine the exact length. The hem should be pinned to the desired length, and then, depending on how high the hem will be, mark it accordingly. For a skirt, a hem marker is helpful; set it to the height of the desired hem, press the bellows, and a chalk line will appear on the fabric. Add at least 3 cm below this line to allow for the hem to be folded over. It’s important to stand straight while doing this; otherwise, the garment will hang unevenly at the hem afterward. For pants, you should be wearing them while a second person pins the length, again making sure there’s enough hem allowance. The same applies to jackets when shortening sleeves, but you have to check whether this is possible, because with a jacket, it’s often not that simple—they usually have a sleeve slit, and the necessary width for that slit is already factored into the cut so that the slit looks neat, but if you shorten it there, the width is often insufficient to recreate a neat sleeve slit—on the sleeve itself, the seam allowance is often only about 0.75 cm wide, if at all, which is far too little for a slit with buttons, etc.  It’s the same with pants that have a turn-up—you should also make sure there’s enough fabric left to create a neat turn-up again. You should measure carefully beforehand and ensure that the shortened piece still looks neat afterward and isn’t botched.
Whenever you shorten a garment, make sure—if there’s a lining—that it’s shortened accordingly, and that there are no ripples in the lining afterward.
Alterations are a very comprehensive field and aren’t always as easy as they look.

Best regards, Inge

Wow.
Great info.
Do skirt hem markers really exist? Can you explain that again in more detail?

Yeah, Josefa, I used to have one myself, but it’s worn out by now too. It’s a device with a sturdy base and a metal rod, with a small container filled with powdered tailor’s chalk attached to it with a clamp. The rod has a centimeter scale; you can adjust that little pot on it, and a rubber tube runs from the pot to a flat nozzle at the front, with an opening of about 0.2–3 mm and a width of about 3–4 cm. Once the desired hem height is set, you walk around the customer and press the rubber ball every 10 cm or so to blow the tailor’s chalk onto the fabric; that way you get the skirt length adjusted exactly to the customer, even if the customer’s figure is a bit crooked. Because if a customer has a pronounced hollow back, the skirt has to be made longer in the back than in the front—otherwise either her bottom will be showing ;-) or you’ll be able to see all the way up the front ;-) :-)
I actually had a case like that once, back when I was still in training. My mom wanted me to sew her a summer skirt, so I said, “Okay, I’ll do it.” I finished sewing the skirt except for the hem, because I wanted to do that in the workshop, where the machines were that we were allowed to use privately during breaks. I stitched up the skirt, held it up, my instructor saw it, and screamed, “INGE!!! Have you been bitten by a monkey? What did I teach you?” *** I just grinned and said, “Don’t worry—it’s supposed to be like that. My mom is so crooked that when she wears the skirt, the hem is dead straight.”* My instructor didn’t believe me and said, “When the skirt is finished, tell your mom to come by—I want to see it.” When my mom arrived, she walked around her with a measuring stick and checked whether the hem was really straight—and it WAS :-)))) My instructor nodded with satisfaction and said, “So you were paying attention after all when I taught you that :)”

Best, Inge

You've really learned something. :-)

Yeah, Inge really knows her stuff. I’d trust her with the hem of my skirt or dress.

If you have to do it on your own, it’s very, very difficult. Since I started sewing just a few months ago, I’ve already noticed that. The summer dress I sewed for the garden was too long based on the pattern. Of course, the pattern is based on average measurements. But since I’m only 1.64 m tall—and thus “below average”—the dress was too long for me. So I shortened it all around by a few centimeters. But somehow, it still wasn’t straight in the end. Of course, that’s because of my “non-standard” figure. Some people have a larger bust, a hollow back, or a bigger bottom. All of that distorts the hem, so no matter how carefully you transfer the pattern to the fabric and sew the dress, it’s always a matter of luck whether it fits in the end. It’s difficult without a second person or even a hem checker. So I’m walking around my garden without the perfect hem. It works too :-)

Best regards, Ina

P.S. Inge, that’s a lovely story from your apprenticeship.