Because I’ve been making clothes nearly all my life, sometimes I forget that certain skills are not, in fact, second nature to everyone. Even so-called basic sewing techniques involve specific instructions, as I discovered this week when I had to fix a dress whose hem had started to come undone. Just photographing the various steps in the process of hand-sewing approximately 11″ was eye-opening— there’s a lot to this seemingly simple repair!

Here’s the situation: It’s a sheath dress in a substantial stable knit, meaning it has some give, but also holds its shape; this quality has to be taken into consideration, as I’ll show you in a bit. Somehow, between the last time I wore it and, well, now, the hem started unraveling between a side seam and the center back seam. (This is a ready-to-wear dress, originally hemmed with the commonly-used clear monofilament that doesn’t tend to wear very well.)

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