okay today i'd like to tell you how to order a pair of trousers if you want to take them up i bought these they're lovely but they're far too long there's two ways of doing it either you can get someone else you try them on and someone pins them up to the length that you want which is lovely if you're not lucky enough to have anyone around to do that for you you can get another pair of trousers that you know fits and you can measure them with your tape measure the way you do that is from the crutch of the top of the leg where the seams meet and you lay your tape measure on and you measure down from that point there where all of the weave where all of the seams cross over and you measure down and you work out the length of your trousers mine are 30 and a half another way of doing it the cheat sway is you simply get your two pairs of trousers you lay them on top of one another this isn't as accurate if you don't have a tape measure to hand you can do it you work out them from these where you want your trousers to end and you mark them you can mark them with a pin or you can mark them with taylor's chalk i'm going to use taylor's chalk and i'm going to put a line across there and i know now that that is the bottom of where my trousers are going to be so i need to turn them up so that is the bottom but as you can see if i do that i've got all of this excess hem and that will weigh heavily on the bottom of the trousers and pull them down they keep wanting to slide down your leg and it'll be uncomfortable so i'm going to show you how to get rid of this bit because i don't want to cut this off this is the unfortunate thing i don't actually want to cut this off here i could with my scissors cut this excess hem off but then i've got such a small amount to play with you can imagine from there to there that i wouldn't be able to get enough turn i'd have a raw edge so i'm going to show you what to do in the eventuality that you can't just cut the bottom hem off and turn them up right now then as you see my mark familiar i'm made with my tailor's chalk you can use a pin you can use a marker but if you do use a marker be careful it doesn't bleed into the fabric now this here is a stitch unpicker um they're only a 50p or whatever from the craft store craft markets um if not then use the fine headed needle but i'm going to use the stitch on picker and you just pop the um picker into the stitch with very very careful you don't pick up on the weave of the trouser and there's a there's a blade at the end there and it just snaps it and you come along to the next bit and the next thing you can see it's unraveling can you see that's pulling out so i'm actually able then to turn it over because it's not attached now and then i can whizz along very very quickly from the inside and as you put it gently when it doesn't come away easily stop pulling otherwise you're going to end up with a hole it doesn't actually matter us because we're going to be folding on that point in a moment i'll show you that bit so you just unpick it all the way around as i say if you haven't got a stitch on picky you can use um fine headed scissors with the pointy end or a needle but it is a lot easier with one of these because you see the blade is in there and it just pulls the stitching away and then afterwards you can just pull away all of your excess thread right now then i've gone around and i've marked my trousers with my tailor's chalk as i've been doing it this sort of thing a long time if you think your eye i'm going by the line of this and coming up if you're not too sure get your tape measure and measure from the end up or measure down is more important because this may not be straight along here as you can see when they've made them these aren't straight so it's not always a good idea to measure from the bottom up but measure from the top down okay now then what i'm going to do here i want to have the same sort of hem as here so i need to allow that much now my idea is that this is going to be the fold here where the stitching was so therefore i want to cut off where this first stitch is where this first fold is because what i want to do is know that when i fold that up one and then two that will be my hem but i want to get rid of all this excess so you need a sharp pair of scissors and i usually do this one one side at a time i don't usually cut all the way through and try and be clever and do both sides because the fabric may have moved but i know i can use that guide line there this is my for this is where the bottom of my trousers are going to be so i'm going to use this fold and cut off this excess by just cutting along the fold like so and i'm only going through one piece of fabric at a time because i find it's more accurate that way i'm going to turn it around i find it's easiest to work on an ironing ball for this because you do need to iron them in a minute to iron in your next crease so i always work on the ironing ball so i find it holds everything in place sometimes the surface of the table is slippery and then the clothes move and don't worry if it's not quite straight because you're not going to see this anyway sometimes people oversew this end keep this seeming i don't think you need to because you're going to be folding that up inside i'm getting rid of any excess any excess cotton there now i know that's my bottom and i know this is going to be my first fold so i'm using those pin marks if you can see them there the holes in the fabric as my first fold and move these out of the way and then using that i'm going to fold it up once with the iron i see it's already beginning to get easier to manage to manipulate to get that fold into place you can see my cutting hasn't been incredibly accurate but it doesn't matter you're not going to see as long as your bottom edge is straight now some people do just do this just have this one fold and they they overlock what's called overlocking on their sewing machine the raw edge but i want a double hem i wanted it folded up twice so i've deliberately done it like this okay so as you can see i've got one crease mark from my iron and there's the mark there that i want to have as the bottom of my trousers so that's one fold and now i'm simply going to fold this again making sure i line up those seams if you don't line up those seams it will go crooked and then you won't have a proper hem okay so you can see that there and just get the iron and i'm just coming along here very carefully find your fingers make sure there's no kiddies around with the iron and all of those things make sure it's all quite safe all right and there we are we come along and you can see now there is my mark it's beginning to fade already my tail is chalk mark that is now the bottom of my trousers so i have now created the same hem that was already on there that leaves us now to sew them up right now not everybody has a sewing machine so sometimes it's handy to know how to sew something on um that therefore then doesn't show through the other side i actually like the sew sewing machine finish because i want them to have that factory look when they're finished however if i didn't want to get my sewing machine out or you don't have a sewing machine choose a thread that is as close to the color as you can so it try it doesn't show too much and then just pop over keep going over the end and so that you've actually got no knots showing and that you've actually secured your thread and then you're going to catch the top of the hem there just catch it and then this is a single thread so it's not too thick and then just very very carefully just catch the weave trying not to go through too much onto the right side and then you're just going to catch the bottom of the hem again and then you do that again so you can see i've got my finger on them guiding it through mind you don't stab your finger there is a knack to this try not to make the stitches too big you're just catching it then coming through the top and when you look on the other side you can hardly see it so if you want that sort of finish i want the top stitch finished well i'm going to use a sewing machine but that is how you can another tip is every so often just catch a couple of times then if the stitches begin to unravel at any point they're only going to unravel a tiny way because you've caught the thread and made it secure okay well i've shown you how to do it if you're just using a needle and thread but if you have got your sewing machine you just pop your trousers on i turn them inside out so that i can see exactly that i'm stitching along this edge trying to keep the distance away from the edge of the foot to start off you go over go back again over it and that way you've secured the end and then you're away you're just sewing it along along that line trying to keep it as even as you can all the way along gently using it through because it's the wrong way round i can keep even pressure on that and i'm threading it back through with my back fingers it's hard to see the actual edge of it there we are straight along and when i get back to where i started back over and there we are and just finally you cut your stitches your thread off and if you want to you don't want to cut it on this side pull your thread through from the other side through to here and then you can cut so you're pulling this thread through to the other side you don't have to do that but some people like to it's a bit fiddly you have to get that i don't know if you can see that there you have to get the thread pull it through and if you want to you can tie it off i do sometimes that way there's no way is that going to go anywhere you don't have to do that if you don't want to because you've over sewn it a few times you can just catch it like this cut your ends off and there you have your finished trousers all ready to wear