Now that my sewing table is set up, I’m getting around to a bunch of sewing and mending that I’ve been putting off since we moved in. I just finished replacing a hem that had fallen out of my silk jacket.

The original hem was probably a machine sewn blind hem stitch, but I used a hand-sewn herringbone stitch this time. Either one is appropriate.

You might know this better as an embroidery stitch, as seen on crazy quilts. Actually, my big Erica Wilson’s Embroidery Book was the only book I had with a diagram of this stitch.

You see this stitch mostly used in the hems of womens clothing, because the wide spacing of the stitches lends itself well to easing the hem, and the tiny horizontal stitches are truly invisible from the outside of the garment. The blurry background below shows the shadow of the hem (I haven’t pressed it yet), but in the clear forground of the picture there are no stitches to be seen from the right side of the jacket.