 from you guys about these little rayon wool shorts that I made for the Stylemaker Fabric Spring Style Tour this year. In that video I mentioned that I had tried out a new technique on the hem in order to achieve a really nice finish on the baby hem. You know these fabrics are super slippery hard to work with and doing a baby hem on them can prove to be quite a challenge and a very humbling experience. So I think I figured out a way to get a really pretty finish on your hems with less effort. Now I'm not gonna say there's no effort but just less effort. So what you will need is whatever garment you're working on assuming that it is lightweight drapey either a silky polyester print or anything with like rayon 100% rayon anything like that that you're having a hard time hemming and then you're also going to need stay tape. Now this is not the iron-on material that you usually use in hems. This is not him tape at all. This is stay tape. It is not stretchy. It's very hard and traditionally you use it in places like shoulder seams on a knit to keep the shoulder seam from stretching out but we are going to use it as like a faux band roll and if you don't know what band roll is I'll try and find a link and put it in the description box but it's basically this really wide like woven material. You line it up with the edge of your fabric sew it on turn it up sew it again and then you pull the band roll out and it leaves your hem behind without anything inside the hem. This method is kind of a cheater method because we're gonna follow those steps but this stuff is going to be in your hem. Like in my shorts I've got the stay tape in there so that almost makes the hem act like as if it had a horse hair braid in it and horse hair braid is what you see in all the ball gowns that make the hems just like so billowy. This stay tape is a lightweight material not a lightweight material unlike actual horse hair so it's not gonna make it stand away from your body. You can see that there's still some drape there but you can also see that it's you know kind of standing on its own a little bit as well. So I don't notice it when I'm wearing the shorts I don't notice it at all. I only notice it when I go to feel it and even that is like very minimal very minimal do you feel it in there. So give it a go and let me know what you think. Here is how to do it. Okay so we've got our short or our garment whatever you're working on and I'm turning mine inside out so you can see my finished inside seams there and we've got our stay tape. Now I'm not even going to cut off any of this I'm just going to unroll it off of the roll as we go around here but the idea is you lay the stay tape so that the raw edges match up. Place it underneath your presser foot. This stay tape is half an inch so I set my sewing machine at 3 eighths of an inch or I move my needle over so that it's three eighths of an inch away from the raw edge and I'm going to keep my fabric and my stay tape lined up with the edge of the presser foot and then keeping these raw edges together and I'm just going to sew a straight stitch all the way around this opening. The the hardest part is making sure that your fabric isn't making sure that your fabric is in line with the raw edge of the stay tape. It will it's because it's shifty it wants to kind of weave in and out so just make sure you get it lined up really good if it's out of line like it is there you just kind of push on it very gently and it'll ease its way in and then it's very difficult for me especially but go slow. All I want to do is put the pedal to the metal but you can't you have to go slow with this. All right coming around to where we started and I want to point out that this this stay tape does not stretch so I'm pulling it taut and laying it over the fabric so that I'm not really touching the fabric at all only to just make sure that the raw edges are even. My other hand is completely free and I will use it to kind of like push down to kind of hold it in place but other than that I'm not really touching the garment at all. All right once we get around to where we started we're just gonna stitch over the first layer just by a couple of stitches back stitch and then cut our threads. Okay and at this point you have the stay tape going all around the hem of your garment. You can cut the stay tape away from the garment at this point and I will go over to my ironing board and what I'm gonna do there is I am going to turn this all under like so and when it gets turned under the stay tape is what we're turning it against so the fold line is actually at the edge of the stay tape not at the seam line so we're turning it under like so and pressing it so that that stay tape is in the fold of the hem. Now at this point too you're also going to want to finish your raw edge. Don't do it before you attach the stay tape if you do it after then you can catch the stay tape and everything inside and you get a nice clean line with your searcher knife so that is what I will do next and then go press all of this up along the stay tape and because this stay tape is kind of a little bit stiff you can you will be able to feel it you can feel it want to turn over on itself can you see how it's like flipping over almost on its own once I get past the 90 degree angle yeah it just it kind of wants to do it on your own it's very subtle but you'll feel it once you start working with it so let me go search the raw edge press up the hem and then I'll show you the final step all right we are back this is what we've got we have our surged raw edge we've got a little fold creased by our iron and on the inside we've got the stay tape nicely locked in with our searcher stitches or zigzag whatever you're using the original seam that we use to attach the stay tape to the garment and then you can see the stay tape is like inside that little fold that is there we folded right along the edge of the stay tape so I like to start at the side seam or the crotch seam if you're making a pair of pants I will do it also with the right side up feel free to do it the other way around if you want to be extra sure that you're catching but the thing of it is is that because our stay tape is half an inch wide and we've folded along that half inch mark I know that this hem is half an inch deep so I can sew it at three eighths and I will just barely be catching the raw edge of the hem but again if you're more comfortable doing it the other way around by all means so I'm just gonna place my fabric at the edge of my presser foot again I have it set so the needle is three eighths of an inch away from the edge of the presser foot and we will just stitch all the way around the opening so it is much much easier to sew now because again the stay tape is not stretchy it's not shifty anymore because the stay tape is in there the only thing you have to worry about is that you know your hem doesn't bubble up like this so I am pulling with this hand pulling it taught at the same time kind of smoothing it over like so and that is getting me a nice flat hem and again go slow okay stitch past where you started stitching a little bit back stitch a couple of stitches and you are done this is the result as you can see from the pair I already showed you but also this is what it looks like I'll give it one final press and that'll get out some a little bit of these wrinkles here and that's that it looks you know completely normal on the inside looks great on the outside and what no one will know is that you've got a little bit of stabilizer on the inside of this him so as you can see it is a very simple method it's not difficult to do at all obviously there's a cost involved because you know you have to buy extra stay tape but stay tape isn't super expensive and it's no more expensive than actual band roll will be and if you can produce a garment that you really really love afterwards then isn't that worth a couple of extra bucks that's how I talk myself into spending more money on my projects but hopefully you guys will give this a go on your next rayon project whether it be shorts a top a skirt whatever it is I'd love to know what you think of it let me know in the comment section below if you have any additional questions about this and then reach out to me on social at inside the hem anywhere at inside the hem comma everywhere after you give this method a try and let me know what you think but that it's gonna do it for me today I will see you all very soon bye