I taught myself how to hem my own pants when I was in seventh grade. I remember it because my mom was in the hospital recuperating from a hysterectomy and I had a new pair of jeans arrive in the mail from Sears. I was really excited about wearing these jeans. They were pre-faded (very cool) and had fancy braided stitching on the back pockets (even cooler!). I couldn't wait for mom to get out of the hospital and feel up to sewing so I hemmed them myself. I think that, from then on, I always hemmed my own pants. And, considering that from about sixth grade on when a lot of the other boys hit growth spurts and mine remained elusive (still waiting on that vertical growth spurt, in fact ... any day now would be nice) all of my pants needed to be hemmed, I have done a fair amount of hemming in my life. And, because it was always more than a little embarrassing for me to have to wear hemmed pants, I quickly got pretty good at hemming them in a way that was pretty imperceptible.

So, whenever Evan has needed to have pants hemmed, I have usually volunteered to do it. But I always put it off to the last minute. In fact, for the most recent pair I hemmed, "last minute" was exactly four hours before he needed to wear them.

I have heard of moms hemming pants with masking tape at the last minute. I am always a little tempted to go scrounge in the garage for the roll of 2" tape and give it a try but, so far, I have resisted. I came darned close on this most recent pair though.

You see, I actually hemmed the first leg pretty quickly ... got it done in about ten minutes in fact ... and decided to turn it back right-side out before I started the other leg when I discovered that I had never turned it inside-out in the first place. I hemmed the first leg on the outside of his pants. My first thought was "No one will ever notice." I realized that was going to be a hard sell for Lisa and Evan, though, so I proceeded to tear out the sewing I'd done, and turn the leg inside-out. Then the masking tape idea came to me ...

Could I simply tape the pant legs into place and "get by"? But then my memories of junior high hemmed pants flooded back and I realized I couldn't do that.

So, this was the first time I hemmed a pair of pants leg by leg ... by leg.