October 19, 2019
Becoming an expert on hemming pants. I had previous sewing experience, so I did some brief research on hemming to brush up and got to sewing.
These are the photos of my process:
I first measured out three points: where to trim the frayed raw edge and the two points the fabric would be folded to create an rolled hem. I chose a rolled hem because of how they cover the raw edge of the fabric and how it the weight helps to pull down the fabric. I trimmed the fabric, folded and clipped the hem, and then threaded my needle. I did not knot my needle because once I created my first stick, I knotted the thread to itself. I created the hem using a hemming stitch, and repeated that stitch until finish, where I knotted the thread to itself to finish the sewing. In the final image, you can see both the outside and the inside of the hem, where the inside shows the stitch and the outside does not show the stitch.
October 24, 2019:
A storyboard for my how to video. I went through a process of hemming pants and documenting each step — even down at the micro levels.
Following crit, I plan on cleaning the video up a bit by working on the visual aspects themselves. The black from the pants take in a lot of light, rendering most of the images extremely dark, despite the fact that I had brought in an extra light to increase brightness; the only time when the black pants did not take so much light was during the super up close shots, which wold cause my video to loose most of its context if I exclusively filmed up close. Stacie mentioned that I would have to be careful of getting my hands in the shots. She also mentioned to be careful of my nails — brightly colored or chipped polish could easily distract my viewer from the content of the video.
October 29, 2019:
Filming my video was challenging because figuring out angles and working around a camera and tripod. Even after editing down all my raw footage, my video was far over the one minute requirement.
October 30, 2019:
Following the first video, the issues were the audio — I would either have to film in complete silence or remove the audio while editing — and the time. This first video was two minutes over, I would have to trim down on this video. I decided to omit the ironing steps in my next iteration, it’s a useful but totally unnecessary step.
Although I ended up not taking out the audio in this iteration for the sake of time, it was still an issue. Even in the bits that were filmed in silence, the static noise within the room would still be difficult to deal with, so I think I’ll completely take out audio in my final version. I still encounter the issue with figuring out the right angles for the camera to be and my hands to keep from blocking the camera when I am sewing.
October 5, 2019:
Final version of How to Hem.
During the free crit we had on Thursday, Stacie showed the hemming group a blind hem stitch that none of use were using. The stitching was completely hidden inside the rolled hem, which I confirmed was an appropriate hem for this project. I practiced this hem on an old t-shirt, and started filming. This time, I used tape indicators under the fabric to show where in the frame the fabric should end and considered how someone who were actually hemming their clothing would orient themselves to the fabric, rather than how I should orient the fabric around the camera.
A some of my peers mentioned that my cuts were too fast — even though I showed the stitch multiple times, it was too fast for them actually understand. This time, I only showed how to do the stitch twice, but made my cuts so that the viewer actually has time to digest and understand each step.
After some final touches in editing — getting rid of audio, making sure my video fit the minute limit, and resizing — this is my final video:
