We all know how it goes—another year flew by, leaving you with last-minute costume shopping a couple of days before Halloween. If you found the perfect costume, but not the perfect size, here is a quick and easy way to hem your or your child’s costume without sewing - just in time for Halloween! For this fix, we used Badge Magic Hemming Strips to shorten the hem of a princess dress.
What you need:
-Scissors
-Badge Magic Hemming Strips
-Safety Pins (if you have any loose fabric)
-Measuring Tape
-Highlighter or Marker
Steps
1. Pin loose materials to ensure an even hem
2. Flip costume inside out
3. Measure the amount you want to hem. If you’re hemming more than ¾”, it works best to trim off the extra fabric, leaving about ¾” for the hemming tape. However, since we only need to hem this ¾” we do not have excess fabric to cut
4. Mark the measurement with a marker. The mark will not be visible on the outside of the dress and will be a helpful frame of reference throughout the repair.
5. Cut a ¾” square out of the side seams, the top of the square you cut is where your hem line will be. This helps to section off the costume, so that you can hem the front and back sections separately and don’t have to hem the entire bottom of the dress at one time.
6. For dresses and costumes as wide at the bottom as this one, you can cut another ¾” square out of the center of the dress in both the back and front, to make the sections more manageable.
7. Starting with the back, cut to fit the hemming tape, for this you can cut the tape into smaller sections particularly if the bottom of your costume isn’t a straight line like this one.
8. Remove the front side of the tape, and apply it to the fabric pressing firmly.
9. Remove the white paper backing.
10. Fold the hem to wherever you marked it before, in this case the ¾” we marked earlier, pressing firmly again.
11. Repeat step 7-10 on the other side of the first section. Don't worry if the fabric bunches a little--focus on making the bottom of the hem even as any fabric bunches above the hem line will be on the inside of the costume at the end of the repair.
12. Repeat step 7-10 again with the other section of the back of the costume.
13. Moving to the front side of the dress, you will repeat steps 7-10 with both sections again. Once you’ve hemmed these front sections, if you have any loose fabric on your costume such as this dress you can hem that too, in order to avoid having to trim the loose fabric we pinned earlier.
14. Apply the Badge Magic strip along the hem you just made of the front sections, and after ensuring the loose fabric is straight, fold and press firmly.
15. Flip dress back right side out, and there you go! Your costume is ready to go, no sewing required.
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