Haute Couture mini-skirt
This is our best description of how to make a beautiful “mini hem” on a thin chiffon skirt, wedding dress or any other garment made from thin, woven fabric. This hem is especially beautiful on “curved” hems, like on a circle skirt. This hem is so small and makes beautiful waves at the bottom of your garment: so the smaller the seam, the “wavier” it will be. Haute couture and high-class sewing, but oh so easy once you get the hang of it.
Haute Couture Mini Hem
1. This stitch uses about 1.5 cm seam allowance, so add that for the hem of your garment. Sew a regular straight stitch on your machine, about 0.75 cm from the edge of your fabric. Reverse at the beginning and end. Make sure the stitch is straight and neat the whole time, if the edge of the fabric makes an ugly curve, don't follow it, but continue sewing a nice, straight stitch all the way through the hem.
3. Cut away the excess fabric along the edge with very sharp scissors, leaving about 2-3 mm of clean edge. The reason you don't sew so close to the edge to begin with is that the machine thread and needle are quite thick compared to the fine threads in your fabric, and the fabric will rather be sucked into the sewing machine where the machine needle hits, and you will be sewing in the air with the loose fine threads hanging loose or the fabric will get caught.
4. Once you have finished cutting off all the excess fabric, carefully fold the edge back and press it flat with the iron, so that the seam is about 1-2 mm from the edge. Then sew the same straight stitch again ON the previous seam.
6. Iron the seam back one last time, so that the seam is now 3-4 mm from the edge.
7. Finally, sew the last seam. Make sure you really sew ON the old seam, otherwise you will end up with two parallel seams close together, which doesn't look very professional.
Hemming this way helps tremendously with unsightly creases that can occur when folding, pressing, sewing directly, without the first preparatory stitch. Hemming this way can work when the fabric is straight, but if the fabric has a slight curve, this method is "fail-proof".
Good luck with your sewing!