INVISIBLE ZIP

I find most instructions of putting on an invisible zip very hard to follow so for what its worth, here's what I did....

1. First of all, I replaced the regular presser foot with a zipper foot.
2. Then I placed the two sides of the skirt, right side facing me, on a flat surface, so the top of the skirt faced away.


3. I opened up the zip and turned the left front side on the left front side of the skirt and pinned it into place.


4. I brought the needle position on the machine to the full left so that when the presser foot was placed down on top of the fabric, the stitch line would be directly beside the teeth of the zip.

5. You can see the first line of stitching here in a pale pink.


6. I then attached the right zip to the right side of the fabric and sewed the zip in place using the same method as previous. (You can see where I have pinned the open seam below).

7. You then sew the seam below and press the zip and the seam flat. The stitching looks a bit crooked on the zip but it’s only because of the bubbling effect of the jacquard. Okay, I was a bit half hearted about this project but do read on please.

8. Finally, I used a zig-zag stitch to finish off the rough edges of the fabric where it met the zip. Its also important not to have too many stray threads hanging around because they’ll get caught in the zip.

CHANGE OF 'ZIPOSITION'!

Last month, I made the safari skirt Burda 3/10 (123), with two inverted pleats in a cheap yellow polyester stripe I had. It looked a bit like translucent upholstery fabric and was a very shoddy piece of cloth indeed. I’d never done a front fly zip, like you see on a man’s pair of trousers, so I decided to experiment with this cloth. It worked, but I thought it was too much effort on a simple pleated skirt and can look a bit bulky.

I wore it once, it started to rip, I cursed myself, I snarled at the lip.
I thought it would be so imperial, but I wasted cash on shoddy material.

So, I got my hands on admittedly, a wintry looking jacquard, and proceeded to make the skirt again, this time, with a simple invisible zip at the side. To do this, I cut the seam allowance off the front pattern piece and cut one piece out on a fold instead of two halves. The fabric was quite stiff and I considered cutting it on the bias (to give better drape) but I hadn’t enough cloth.



Tomorrow I will show you how I put in the invisible zip.