How To Sew Horsehair Braid Into A Hem

Hello and welcome to Professor pincushion in this tutorial, I'm going to be talking about horsehair braids, which is a hem stabilizer, and how to sew it into your hems. So you can take your skirt from this to this. It'S perfect for fuller skirts such as circle skirts. So let's go ahead and get started. Here'S an example of some horsehair braids. Now it comes in different widths, so you can get it anywhere from a half inch, which is this one to three and a half inches in width. This one right here is actually an inch. The thinner, your horsehair braid is the less dramatic it's going to be a little bit more subtle. If you do the very wide one, then obviously it's going to add a lot to the bottom of your hemline. If you're not sure which one you want to use, I would definitely experiment on scraps of your fabric. Also, this one you can see is really really flexible and very lightweight. They have some that are a little bit more sturdier than this. So again you just want to experiment. It comes in white or black. I purchase mine by the yard at the fabric store, it usually comes in a box and then you buy it by the yard and with this one you'll notice well with all horsehair braids, it does have some stretch to it. It'S like elastic, so you want to be careful when you're applying it that you're not stretching it as you're, laying it onto your hemline. You want it to be nice and flat. The first example I'm going to go over is how to apply your horsehair braid for just a regular straight hem. So this is a non curvy hem here. The first thing you need to do is adjust your hem allowance. If you need to normally, our hem allowance is an inch 5/8 of an inch, something like that. For this particular thing, your hem allowance should only be a quarter of an inch. So if you need to cut off some of the bottom of your skirt, so you're adding just a quarter of an inch past, your hemline then go ahead and do that first, then you're going to take your skirt or your dress, you're, going to lay it so You'Re, looking at the right side of the fabric, this is the right side of my dress right here. I'M going to take my horse hair braiding. You can see I'm using my one-inch for this example and I'm going to line it up with the raw edge of my skirt now and I'm going to go ed, pin this into place because we're next going to take it to the Machine and stitch it down. Here at the bottom, that's your sewing machine you're then going to sew an eighth of an inch seam allowance. So I would use a matching thread. I'M just going to go ahead and use black thread, so it stands out a little bit when I show you the wrong side and I'm just doing a vertical, regular stitch. Nothing fancy about this again, be careful that you're not actually stretching the horsehair keeping it flat and even now, I'm looking at the wrong side of my garment, so you can see a horse. Braid is sewn onto the right side. Looking at the wrong side, you can just see my seam down here at the bottom you're going to pull out the horsehair and the seam is going to rest on this side and then you're going to flip it up again. So now the horsehair is on the right side. Let me show you one more time so horsehair on right side, I'm going to pull out the edge seam allowance is on top of the wrong side of the bottom of the dress, I'm going to flip it up and there you go. So you don't even see the raw edge of my fabric anymore, which is why this is kind of nice because it finishes it. At the same time, then you're going to grab your pins and you're going to pin it into place. You just need to make sure that when you're flipping it over, this here gets nice and tight, because if you leave it too loose, it's going to be looking sloppy and being puffed up and everything like that. So I'm going to go ahead for my whole hemline. I'M going to do this, try to make everything, look, nice and neat and then we're going to take it back to the machine. The last step is I'm going to be sewing close to this top folded edge that we got when we flipped everything over and again, I'm just doing a regular Lane, stitch everything's normal and that's all there is to it next we're going to go over what to Do if you have a curved hem, such as in a circle skirt now, sometimes you have to do a little bit of prep work, which is what I'm doing right now so for my horse, hair braid. What I'm going to do first is on one side. It doesn't matter which side near the top you're going to do an ease or basting stitch. So it's just the largest stitch on your machine. Don'T worry about doing any back stitching. This is to help us ease it into the hem line, which is circular. If you happen to purchase horsehair braids and has these little loops coming off the edge, that means that they've already done that for you they've already built in that ease factor, so you don't have to do this. Mine, you can see, is completely flat on both sides. I don't have this, so I'm going to go ahead and do my basting stitch and I'm just doing it at the eighth inch mark. Just like we did before you're going to take your horse, hair, braid and you're, going to line it up with the raw edge of your skirt. Again, your hem Alone's of the skirt should only be a quarter of an inch and I'm lining up the edge of my horsehair braid. That does not have the basting stitch, so this is going to be on top and the side that doesn't have the stitches is going to be the side that lines up with the raw edge. Now the ends I'm just going to match up with my center back seam and I'll show you what to do once. You have them overlap, so it's a little bit neater, but for now I'm just going to go ahead and pin this all the way around. The bottom of my skirt matching up the raw edge, just like we did before when both ends come together, I'm going to overlap them by a little bit now what I do just to kind of protect the horsehair, since it is scratchy where the ends are, I'm Going to take a little piece of ribbon and I'm going to put it behind the layers of horse braid between the horse, braid layers and my skirt fabric. So this ribbon is in between those layers, and I just pinned it down here so that way, when we flip everything over this ribbon is going to cover or be right over the ends of the horse hair and it's going to protect your skin. So it doesn't get all scratched up once everything is pin into place, we're going to again sew an eighth inch seam allowance all along this raw edge. The next step is going to be the same exact thing that we did for this straight edge ham, you're, going to take it you're, going to flip it over to the inside or the wrong side, and then you're going to start pinning it into place. Now the issue is because it is curved, sometimes you'll, find areas will not lie flat like this area. Right here is really bad. We have a little bit here, and all you need to do is we're going to pull some of our ease, stitches or basting stitches. So I'm just grabbing a straight pin I'm pulling out one of my stitches or pulling up one of the stitches and I'm just going to pull it, and I was going to do is start cinching up just the top part of the horsehair braid and that will Cause it to go in a little bit and it should lie a little bit flatter because you're easing that all into place. So once you do it, you can go ahead and pin it now. If you have the ones that have the loops on the edge, you would go ahead and pull those instead of your baseness stitches, because this loops act as the same function now after everything is in place, see that I would recommend, if you are doing the hem, That has the straight edge, just press it on the bottom, so you have a nice clean edge here. Just be careful that you don't have your iron too hot. I know my horse, hair braid is made out of polyester. So if we have your iron too hot, you might melt it, so you do want to be careful with that this time, what I'm going to be doing is hand sewing the top of the horsehair braid to my fabric, so, instead of stitching it down here, I'm Going to do a hand stitch up here to hold everything into place. Also, I want to show you real quickly. Here'S the part where it overlapped - and I used my ribbon so when I flipped it over the ribbon was on top and all I did was just folded over and tuck it behind the horsehair. So everything is covered. So let's go ahead and start this hand sewing. I'M using needle and thread here I have a knot at one end, I'm going to grab a little bit of my fabric and then a little bit of the horsehair braid, pull it through. I'M going to take my needle out. So it's out of the way I'm going to go up, maybe about a quarter of an inch and again I'm going to grab a little bit of fabric and then a little bit of the horsehair braid. Don'T pull it too fast or you may cause a knot. You see my thread is quite long here: go up a quarter of an inch grab, a little bit of fabric and a little bit of the horsehair braid, and I'm going to do this all the way around. So it's time-consuming, but you'll notice that you won't notice your hem stitches as much on the right side of the fabric, especially if you use a matching thread now. I want to talk about what you could do if you're working with lace. So in this particular case, I'm actually going to work with my half-inch horsehair braid. So it's a little bit thinner and we're going to pretend this is the part that I'm going to hem for my dress. You know it's small, but just as an example, you're going to take the edge that you're going to him and for this particular case you want to have a 5/8 seam allowance. The last two examples: we did a quarter inch seam allowance this particular case. I'M doing five eighths of an inch, I'm looking at the wrong side of the garment at the edge that I'm going to hem, I'm going to bring it up five-eighths of an inch. So I'm going to use my sewing gauge to measure it. I'M going to pin it into place all along the whole hemline and then we're going to take it to our machine and close to this folded, edge you're going to do a basting stitch. So again, that's the largest or longest stitch on your machine, no back stitching. My basting stitch is now finished and I know it's hard to tell because it's laced, but we are still looking at the wrong side here. Here'S my raw edge you're then going to take your half inch, horsehair, braid and you're going to place it so that one edge matches up the folded edge that you baste it so you're, not matching it with your thread of your basting stitch, but with the actual Folded edge, this will be right on the edge there and you're going to go ahead. Pin it into place because we're going to take it to the Machine and we're going to stitch on the top edge of the horsehair braid and then on the bottom edge of the horse or brace. There'S going to be two rows of stitches top and bottom of the horsehair braid I already sewed one edge. So now I'm going to be working on the top edge of my horsehair. Definitely use a matching thread. It'Ll, look a lot neater, I'm just doing contrasting thread. So you'll be able to see where I sewed. The last thing you we need to do is you would need to trim this leftover, excess hem allowance that we still have here. If I was to flip this up here, so this is the five-eighths that we originally folded over and I would just trim as close as you could, to the top of the horsehair braid trim, all this extra fleece off. So it'll look nice and neat. If we were to look at this on the right side, this is what the finished side would look like. Obviously it was nicer if you had matching thread unlike mine. Now, if you want it to look even neater, what you could do is, in addition to the 5/8 seam allowance. Add another half inch to that, so that would be 1 and 1/8 inches. So then, after you get done trimming it, you can take all this and you can fold it over again and then, just like we did with the curve, you can hand sew this top down and that way it will look a little bit neater. So, that's all you need to do in order to hem horsehair braid into your hems. 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