Transcript
So, now that we have our zipper all pressed, we need to go our fabric. And for this demonstration, I’m just going to mark the wrong side of the fabric so it’s a little clearer to see what we’re doing. So, X is wrong side of our fabric.
So, what you want to do is you want to turn your fabric to the right side. And you want to take your zipper and also lay it right side up. So, that means that your zipper pull is going to be faced towards you. And then, you can kind of flatten your zipper out straight.
And now, if you think about it, your zipper needs to go right sides together. So, we’ll flip this onto the piece. And then, if you’re ever curious to know if you’re doing this right, you can always take a couple of pins and pin your zipper to double check and make sure you’re sewing your zipper on the right way.
So, if we do this, after we sew line, when we zip the zipper up, the teeth are going to pull this way and it’s going to pull all the fabric in, like that. So, we know we’re doing the right thing. I’m just going to unpin this in one spot. We’ll move that aside, because we’ll do one side at a time.
Okay. So, here we have our zipper and that’s where it’s going to go. But we want to line it up kind of nicely. So, I’m just going to line up the top of the tape with the top of the fabric. And I’m going to line up the edge of the zipper tape with our raw edge of the fabric. And I’m going to pin it down, nice and evenly and straight.
And then, you can just pin it down as far as you can go. That zipper pull is always in our way. Okay. Now, we can take this to the sewing machine. So, what we want to do when we sew this is to sew as close to the teeth as possible. So, you’re going to use a zipper foot. We have our zipper foot here and my zipper teeth are on the left. So, I want to go ahead and put my zipper foot on the right.
And then, I’m going to take my threads, put them underneath and towards the back. And now, I’m ready to stitch. So, I’m going to take the whole project and put it in. I’m going to lower my zipper foot. Now, the very edge of the zipper foot is touching the zipper teeth. I want to get it as close as possible, so really squish it up there.
And then, I’m going to take this pin out and we’re just going to sew straight down. Backstitch at the top, and then use your hands to keep the zipper right up against that presser foot. And you can see what’s happening here: the zipper teeth are kind of curling back because they’re pressing up against the zipper foot, and that’s okay.
Take your pins out as you go. And then, you just want to sew down as far as you can get, closest to the zipper pull. So, that’s about as close as I can get because now the pull’s in the way of my presser foot. So, I’m going to reverse stitch, backstitch, and now I’m done.
Okay. So, now we have half the zipper installed. So, looking at it from the right side, you see the zipper pull is facing you. And then, from the wrong side, we have the zipper sewn onto the edge. So, here’s the tricky part. We want to take right side up on the left and now we’ll take our pink fabric on the right, wrong side down, right side up. And we want to lay this zipper right side up. So, we have to try to twist it a little bit.
And so we see the zipper pull is facing us. And now, we always sew right sides together. So, what are we going to do? We’re going to twist this again and we’re going to lay it flat against the second piece, and just pin it in place. Once it’s pinned down, it’s good. You know that’s how it’s going to lay, so now you can kind of move this around to get a better position to pin the whole thing down.
So, get your pins out and we’re going to line up the top of the tape with the top of our fabric, matching our raw edge with the side of the zipper tape. And then, just pin it down as far as you can go. That’s good. So, now let’s take this to the sewing machine. And, if you’ll notice, my zipper is now on the right-hand side, but our zipper foot is also on the right-hand side. We need the zipper foot to move to the left. So, I’m just going to unattach it and reattach it with the presser foot on the left.
Make sure those threads are behind. So, now our zipper is on the right. I’m going to line that up and we’ll do a backstitch, and then I’ll go ahead and start sewing. So, remember, we’re keeping the edge of the zipper foot pressed right up against those teeth. And then, I’m going to go until my presser foot hits the zipper pull, and then I’m going to backstitch.
Okay. So, now we have our zipper in, and if you turn your fabric right side up so everything is right side up. You see this is wrong side with our Xs. We do right side up and we pull our zipper, and you can see our hidden invisible zipper. But, we’re not quite finished yet because we need to finish the seam at the bottom.
So, the last step is to take your project to the machine and you want to stitch from where we left off at the zipper, down to finish your seam. So, this part can be a little tricky. It just takes a little bit of practice. You’ll keep your zipper foot in your machine and now, again, my zipper is on the left, so we’ll need to move the foot again to the right.
Okay. So, make sure you’re starting where you left off. So, we’re starting right at this backstitch at the bottom of our zipper. We have the raw edges of our fabric together and we have our zipper foot in. So, we’re trying to get as close to that stitch as we can.
So, we’re going to do a back stitch and we’re going to go all the way down the seam. And sometimes, it’s happening right now, because this is really bulky, it’s getting caught underneath the foot. So, you might have to just kind of lift things a little and flatten some stuff out. And then, now we have our completed invisible zipper.
