How To Sew a Zipper Into Pants - Detailed Tutorial for Beginners

welcome everyone I am talk custom and on this video I'm going to show you how to sew a zipper into a custom pair of jeans so what you'll need to get started is whatever pattern you're gonna use for your pants whatever fabric you want to use which I'm using an 8 ounce blue denim here you'll need some pins some scissors a zipper foot and a sewing machine the sewing machine that I'm gonna be using is the Brother st 150 HDH and it looks like we're all set so let's show you what the first step is now the first thing I always do when I'm putting in a zipper is I interface my fly facing first which I've already done here with a mid to heavyweight interfacing and then I interface one of my panels to my fly so the first thing I always do is sew the fly together so let's do that now I'm just gonna put these two panels of the fly together right sides together and then we're going to be sewing the curved edge of this fabric right here now I'm just gonna do a straight stitch along this curved edge here at a 5/8 of an inch seam allowance all right so once you've got that sewed up all you have to do is just trim that seam about a quarter inch from where the stitches were that we just did now we just have to turn this so that it is right side out so I'm just gonna flip this and try to do my best to get this seam as flat as I possibly can on the outside and then I'm going to take this over to my ironing board and press this into shape so that it lays nice and flat alright now that this is all pressed and flat you'll notice that the side and top still open so normally I over lock the side and top or if you don't have a serger you can just do a zig-zag stitch over the top and side so I'm gonna go Serge this real quick alright so we've got our fly interface pressed and Serge this looks really good and now it's time to actually sew our zipper to the fly itself so make sure that you've got your surged or zigzag edge on your left and then I'm gonna line up the top left corner of my zipper tape with the top left corner of the fly and this is going to run all the way down the left edge of our fly now something I always run into is my zipper is always a little bit too long for my fly so I'm gonna shorten my zipper by about an inch and a half so that it ends about right here I do have a separate video on how to shorten and modify zippers so please watch that video otherwise I'm just gonna do it real quick and we're gonna move on alright so anyway I just put a new zipper stop here using a zig zag stitch with zero stitch length on the widest setting and then I'm just gonna cut the zipper so now it's about I don't know an inch and a half shorter or so so now when I put our new shortened zipper on our fly starting at the top left corner running down this left edge that's a much better length for me to work with I got two left this a little bit longer but this is fine alright now it's time for us to put our zipper foot in so I'm gonna put this in the right side so that we've got open space on the right side alright so now it's time to sew our zipper to the fly itself and it's kind of hard to pin this so I just make sure that I line up the left corner of my zipper tape with the left corner of the fly and now with the zipper foot in place I'm going to line this up and do a little back stitch if the zipper gets in the way you can just unzip the zipper and then go all the way down the side and then when I get close to the bottom I'm gonna raise the foot make sure the needles down and then I'm gonna zip this up and just sneak the zipper head right past the needle okay now I'm just gonna go to the bottom and do a back stitch at the end also I'm using white thread just to make it a little bit easier for you guys to see normally I would use a different color but for this demo this is fine alright so now you should have something that looks like this we've got both pieces of our fly we've got the zipper sewn in you can do a little test to make sure that the zipper works properly and this is looking perfect so far alright so now you're gonna need the front panels of your pants so I'm gonna put these right sides together like this and I always do this so that this edge right here is on the right side when I'm working with this now on most patterns there should be a knot about right here and this tells us where we need to start sewing the front panels together so usually about half an inch above where that notches is where the stitch starts so I'm gonna put a pin there and that's what the red pinhead there is for and it's gonna go down about an inch and a half I usually do it a little bit extra just so I have some more room to work with so what I'm gonna do is I'm going to do a straight stitch between these two notches following the curve at a 5/8 inch seam allowance and I usually do like a double backstitch here and a double backstitch here to make sure that it stays nice and strong okay so I'm gonna take my zipper foot out and I'm gonna put my regular presser foot back in alright so this is how it looks for me when I end up putting in a zip so I'm gonna put my foot down and take this pin out now I'm gonna do a double backstitch real quick so I'm gonna go forward a couple backwards a couple forward backwards and then I'm gonna go and I'm gonna follow the curb this until we get to this second pin here then I'm gonna take this pin out we're gonna do the same thing back stitch forward back board and that's just to add a lot of extra strength because this is one of those parts on your pants where there's a lot of stress and pressure over time so you want to make sure those stitches don't pop so this is what it looks like for me when I'm joining my two front panels together now that these are sewn together here we can open this up and you're gonna find that they are going to be joined right kind of at where the bottom of your zipper is gonna be and if I pull these apart you're gonna have two raw edges of fabric and I'm gonna show you how to work with that all right now this part's really important it's really important that you put your fly facing on the Left panel and I know this is my right side but this is my left panel pants and the fly and the zipper are gonna go on the right panel even though it's on my left side so make sure that you do it zipper goes on your left and the fly facing goes on your right now you're not going to need the zipper right now so I'm gonna show you how to put in the fly facing first so the first thing I usually do is kind of fold the left side of my panels away or this would be the right side I suppose and then I'm gonna try to lay the other side as flat as I can so that this seam doesn't get bunched under and it's nice and flat so what we have to do is we are going to pin the fly facing starting with this top left corner here and the fly facing is going to be longer than it needs to be in but I'll show you how to work with that okay now in my last pin if I pull these apart I can see my white stitches of where we joined those front panels together so I'm gonna line this up and I'm gonna put a pin just right above where that stitch is holding those panels together so I've got three pins in here making sure that my left edges of fabric are nice and flush and I'm gonna show you how we do this stitch alright so after you get your fly facing pinned into place you're gonna flip the whole thing over so that you can see the inside of your fabric so what we're gonna do is sew at our top right corner all the way down at a 5/8 of an inch seam allowance and I'm gonna zoom in real quick right here alright so as soon as we get our stitch down to about right here I'm gonna stop right before this stitch where we joined our front panels together and I'm gonna do a back stitch right there and that's gonna join our fly facing together and we're not gonna stitch into these stitches right here at all all right so I'm gonna line this up with my 5/8 of an inch seam allowance put down presser foot start with a back stitch then we're gonna sew all the way down I'm gonna remove the pins as I go from underneath because we put them on the other side all right now as I come up to my last pin I know we're getting close to where we joined our front panel so I'm gonna zoom in real close and show you how I do this so as I can see my needle is lined up with where these stitches are gonna be so I'm not gonna sew all the way into those stitches I'm gonna stop maybe a couple of stitches before like right there do a back stitch I might do a double back stitch just because I want to make sure this stays nice and strong so that looks good about like that all right now I'm gonna trim my threads and then we're gonna see how this looks so on the inside you should have something that looks like this I wish I used red thread or something so you could see a little bit better but hopefully you can tell that this is all lined up like that so now let's fold this outside and see how it looks alright now before we unfold this I forgot I'm gonna turn this upside down and we're gonna trim the seam so that it's real shallow alright so when I'm trimming the seam I am going to do this again about a quarter inches from our stitches we just did here make sure you don't cut through if the fabric underneath and I'm just going to very carefully cut on the left side of our stitches here until we get to the part where we joined our front panels together which is where we ended this stitch right here so when I get there I'm just gonna kind of cut at a diagonal so that it looks something like that alright so you should have something that looks like this now that we trimmed this seam back and as I open the pants we're gonna see the fly facing in the middle here and there should be quite a bit of extra fabric on the bottom here and that's okay now the reason we trimmed this seam is because we are gonna end up folding this fly facing in half I'm gonna flip this this way so you can see it a little bit better alright so we've turned the fly facing to the inside of the pants and I can see my seam right here and I want to match this up so that the seam is right on the edge and then I'm gonna take this over to my iron and press this into shape alright so I pressed our fly facing into shape I'm just gonna pin this so it's out of the way but it should look something like this and we've got a nice pressed edge right here so now what I want to do is I'm gonna flip this back over so I'm looking at the front of the pants and this is the edge that we just pressed into shape and I always top stitch from the top all the way down to wear the pants meet at this center point right here alright now this is why I'm using white thread so that you can see my top stitching a little bit more easily so I'm lining this up so that we're gonna edge stitch right on this pressed seam right here I'm going to be using a triple wide straight stitch for this so you can see it a little bit more easily as well now I don't have to backstitch because we're doing a triple stitch now I'm just going to stitch all the way until we get to the front of where we joined our front panels together now as I get to where we're gonna stop our stitch I want to make sure everything underneath is nice and flat so I'm feeling and straightening everything out underneath now I'm just gonna follow this right up to before right where we put that stitch joining our front panels together I am going to do a back stitch here and then I'm just gonna cut my thread alright so now that we have this top stitch on our front left panel we are now going to prepare our right front panel for putting the zipper in the fly in place now this next part is very important that we do this properly otherwise you're not going to have the results that you're looking for so I'm going to show you exactly how I do this so that it looks good every time all right now I'm looking at the inside of my pants and what I want to do is I want to turn this upside down said that I see the top of where my pants are gonna be close to me at the bottom here alright so what most patterns tell you to do is to press this edge half of one seam allowance over like that and then press it into shape when I was new I didn't read that right and I pressed into full seam allowance over and it never looked good so make sure you press this about half the seam allowance I even do it shorter if I can so I'm gonna take my iron and I'm going to iron in this edge so that just half of the edge is pressed over or half of one seam allowance so if I measure this this would be like a quarter inch or so so once you have this the way you want it I'm just going to flip this back over so we're looking at the front panels like we were before all right so you'll know you press this properly if you can still see a little bit of fabric going to the right side of where our Center stitches are here so you want to see a little extra fabric going behind where our left front panel is to make sure that before you move on to the next step that you can see a little bit of extra fabric just like that so that when we close this up it's going to cover it like that and look and sharp when we're done all right so once you've got this edge pressed at half a seam allowance I'm just gonna fold this back and then you're gonna grab your zipper fly and zipper and I'm just gonna place it right behind that pressed edge now I usually start with my zipper all the way open so that the zipper doesn't get in the way and I'm gonna line up the pressed edge of my denim with right before the zipper teeth so normally I don't use pins for this part I just do it by hand but it's a good habit if you're just new to this to pin ascend a place to make sure it lays nice and flat okay so as I'm pinning close to the bottom where the zipper is I should have a little bit of extra fabric like we had planned out when we press this so if I pull everything over to the left side it should allow me to see that pressed edge you know I want this to go and so below where the zipper ends so I'm gonna put a pin right here on the bottom right on that edge of pressed denim that we had just done I'm gonna put a pin just like that I know it might be kind of hard to see but hopefully this makes sense when you end up doing it now I'm going to flip this fabric back over to the right and then I'm going to fold it up as if it was finished so it will eventually look like that on the bottom which is really clean and what we're gonna do is we're gonna do a top stitch as close as we can get to the zipper teeth on the right edge of this folded denim from the top all the way below the right side of where these stitches end all the way down to about where the white head of this pin is as close as we can get on the right the more precise you are the better these are gonna look when you're finished all right so make sure you have your zipper foot in here and I have this on the right side because our zipper is on the right side as well I'm going to unzip the zipper head so that that is not in my way and I'm not gonna do a triple straight stitch I'm just gonna do a regular straight stitch but I am gonna move my needle all the way to the right so that it's a little bit easier to work with now I'm gonna start about half an inch from the top and I'm gonna pull up my first needle here so that it's not so bulky now this should be laying nice and flat all right now my goal is to stitch as close as I can to the right folded edge of this denim without hitting the zipper teeth that's what I'm looking to do so I'm gonna do a couple of stitches and then I'm gonna back stitch all the way up to the top all right now I'm gonna stitch all the way down to the bottom again as close as I can to that right edge of that folded denim taking out pins as I go cuz pins in denim get really bulging alright now as I got too close to the bottom I'm gonna lift my foot and I'm going to sneak the zipper head back to the top again so that's out of the way you know I'm also gonna fold everything on the bottom all the way over to the left so all I can see is this raw edge that we're dealing with and the fly and the zipper itself so continuing on I am following that straight stitch I'm going to take out my last pin right here and now we're gonna go about an inch underneath where the zipper ends I'm gonna do a nice back stitch right here I'm sorry if I'm blocking camera back stitch and that should be good alright so I just finished that stitch but it's kind of hard for me to see these stitches on camera so I'm gonna do my triple stitch again just to make it a lot more obvious so that you guys can see it alright this turned out really well so now you can see those stitches it's nice and secure so that is part of that and our right front panel is attached to our zipper in our fly now as I lay all the fabric flat back to where it should be it should look something like this and your zipper should be completely hidden now at the bottom here it shaded lay nice and flat if you didn't turn over the correct amount of fabric when we put our fly on this would look a lot more like that then you'd be able to see this the actual zipper teeth and it just wouldn't look quite as polished all right so this part turned out really well and now we get to talk about how this works on the inside of the pants so I'm gonna flip this over so as we look at the inside of our pants you should have your zipper fly which is sewn to this panel here we've got our zipper which the right side is sewn to the fly the left side is exposed here and then we've got our fly facing which is on our left front panel and this all looks really good so now what we're gonna do next is get ready to sew the other half of our exposed zipper into our fly facing which is over here and I'll show you how that works all right so I flip this back over and what I want to do first before we do any of that prep work is I want to lay this so that it looks exactly the way I want it to look when the pants are done so I've got about maybe a quarter inch or a half inch overlapping where the zipper teeth are I can feel my zipper teeth and they're about right here where my thumb is so what I want to do is I'm going to pin the top as close as I can to the left edge all the way through all layers here so I'm gonna do one pin at the top and then one fairly close to the bottom and this is just to hold it into place so that we can plan out everything on the inside properly all right so we've got our zipper basically pinned shut right now and as I flip this to the back now this should kind of stay in the shape that we want it to when we're done all right so this next part is really precise I want to pin my fly back so it's out of the way and but I don't want to move the zipper at all like that okay I want this zipper to naturally lay as flat as it's gonna lay like that and then I'm gonna hold the zipper with my fingers and pull back the fly and then I'm gonna pin this on the right side so it's out of my way and I'm actually kind of pressing the zipper towards the left a little bit so that it's forced to lay naturally flat then I'm going to pin the bottom of this fly open alright so we should have something that looks kind of like this and I can tell that my zipper is laying nice and flat because it's not puckering it's not bubbling up or anything like that alright so at this point we have to sew our zipper tape to our fly facing but without going through our front left panel so I'm going to reach under the fly facing and I'm going to grab with my thumbs the zipper tape and all of this fabric under here I'm going to kick to the other side so that there's nothing underneath that at all alright so now our zipper tape and our fly facing are together I'm just holding it with my fingers right now and if I look on the other side there's nothing else underneath there so we're not going to sew through anything we don't want to now again I'm pressing the zipper down towards the fly facing if you pull it up like this then you pin it down it's not gonna lay flat so make sure this lays as flat as it possibly can and then once again I'm gonna start at the top put a pin through just the zipper tape and the fly facing then I'm gonna again press the zipper down so it lays nice and flat in the middle and put a pin in the middle and now as I get to the bottom this part really wants to pull up so I'm pressing it down I'm gonna put a pin in the bottom left corner through just the zipper and the fly facing so you should have something that looks like this so our next step is to sew from the top to the bottom of our zipper tape that's gonna hold it to the fly facing itself and before you even do that you can lay your pants out flat make sure everything's laying nice and flat I can actually pull these pins out now where the front was and I can see my zipper right I can actually unzip it to see if this is laying flat and that looks good and normal now if everything seems good and it's laying nice and flat I can put this back together I don't have to repin that but I'm just gonna flip this back over then we're gonna take this over to our sewing machine and I'm going to need my zipper foot and we're gonna do a stitch from the top to the bottom of this now because our zipper is on the left I need to actually switch my zipper foot so that it is not on the right and it's going on the left then I'm gonna move my needle all the way over to the other side so it doesn't run into the actual zipper foot itself now again make sure all of your other fabric is out of the way because you just want your zipper tape in the fly facing I'm gonna pull out my first pin and hold it with my thumb sorry if I'm blocking the camera I'm doing my best just to make sure that this looks good so it should look something like that and I've got my zipper foot down now I'm just gonna do a regular straight stitch not a triple stitch and I'm gonna do a start stitch and a back stitch we're just gonna go all the way up the zipper make sure you pull out your pins as you go along and for this one I don't have to move my zipper head it's just important that I'm sewing my zipper tape to the fabric itself I will do a back stitch and that is perfect all right so now we got something that looks like this and you won't see these stitches so it doesn't matter if they look pretty or not but before we do our final step I forgot to overlock this edge here and I like to do that because this will fray eventually and I don't want that to happen so I'm gonna over lock from this bottom point all the way around this curl to the top here okay that looks much better so I want to explain this last part before we actually do it just so you understand what's happening so basically the zipper is sewn to this side and now the zipper is sewn to the fly facing but the fly facing isn't sewn to anything so this if I pull it is gonna be all loose right so if I look at the outside there's our front which looks nice and clean but if I pull this we've got this kind of floppy fly thing we don't want that to happen so our last step is to keep that from happening and that's where if you've looked at a pair of jeans normally you see it two stitches that go from about here all the way down and then they kind of curl into the bottom of the zipper so that's what we're gonna do now and I just want to show you how to get set up for that all right so now before we do our final step here the most important thing is that this is all laying perfectly flat and feel free to iron this whole thing down if you need to just to make sure that it is nice and polished now the way I always do this is I am going to take a pin and I'm going to start at the top just put it barely in the left edge of that but I want my pin head as far away from this surged edge as I can because we're gonna be sewing like right through here so I'm just gonna put a bunch of pins in here and then we're gonna go all the way down to the bottom all right we are now set up to do our final stitches and it's extremely important that you keep this fly pinned to the right side because if it's not and it's folded over you're gonna sew through everything and you're not gonna be able to open your pants so now we're gonna flip this back over now I can actually see where my pins are in the front of this fabric here and that's gonna be really helpful the one thing I want to figure out is where the exact bottom of our zipper is so that when we get to the bottom we don't sew through it so I'm just gonna take a pin a red pin and I'm gonna push it all the way through where the bottom of my zipper is so that I make sure I don't sew through any zipper teeth so this red pin head tells me don't sew through that now most Jean patterns have you do two parallel stitches that go all the way from the top down they're gonna curl in right underneath where this red pin is so I always do the inside stitch first and then I'm going to do the outside stitch so the inside stitch I'm gonna do right along the left side of where I can see those pins right there the pin heads are way over here so I'm not gonna sew through that anyway let's jump onto our machine and show you how this looks alright and one last time I'm going to switch from my zipper foot to my regular presser foot I'm also gonna make sure that I've got just a regular straight stitch and that my needle is right in the middle I'm not gonna do a triple top stitch just because I want to make sure this turns out nice and clean all right so what I'm gonna do here is I'm gonna stitch as parallel to this front fly facing top stitch as I can and when I get about here I'm gonna start curbing underneath where that red pin head is now I'm gonna start at the top and I'm not going to top stitch just in case I make any mistakes so that I can do this over again but I'm gonna go straight all the way down I'm not even pulling my pins out until I get to the bottom if you notice that your fabric starts to bunch make sure that you pull your pins out right away and you lay your fabric flat and as I get to about here I am going to pull my curved pins out from underneath all right now this part just takes a little bit of practice and finesse so I'm just going to hold my fabric with both hands and I'm going to let the Machine pull the fabric through but I'm gonna curl the fabrics of that I've got a nice curve and now I'm gonna make sure that I'm not sewing through anything underneath so I'm gonna pull the fabric up and take a look and pull everything towards me that I can lay this nice and flat and I'm gonna sew right up to that first stitch that we did that holds these two front panels together so when I hit right in the center of that seam right there I'm gonna do a back stitch and I'll actually probably do a double back stitch here okay now it looks good now I'm gonna trim my threads alright now I just want to take a look at this to make sure I'm happy with the way this looks before I do my outside parallel stitch here and I'm actually very pleased with this so I'm gonna pull out this red pin and then I'm gonna pull out all the rest of the pins that we had behind one other thing I'm looking for is that there's nothing bunching up there's no puckered fabric everything is laying nice and smooth and flat right here which is exactly what we want to see so now that I'm happy with this I'm gonna do another parallel stitch and I'll show you how I do that on the machine right now alright so to do my parallel stitch I always do this the same way so I'm gonna use the left edge of my presser foot and I'm gonna put that right on top of the stitches that we just did right there and I'm gonna do a straight stitch making sure that these stitches here are absolutely flush with the edge of my presser foot now again when I get to the bottom curve I'm gonna hold it with both hands and I try to do this in one sweeping straight stitch motion if you stop while you're doing this sometimes it gets a little messed up and I'm gonna make sure everything underneath is nice and flat pull it nice and tight so that I can see this seam right here and I know I'm not gonna sew through my zipper teeth because that's way up here where that red pin was as I get to that Center seam I'm gonna do a back stitch and a front stitch and maybe one more back stitch and that should be good so now I'm gonna trim my thread and we're gonna see how this looks all right so we're all done with our parallel fly facing stitches here this all looks very good and I'm very happy that all the fabric is laying nice and flat and I'm gonna look at the inside one last time to make sure this all looks good I'm gonna pull out the pins for my actual fly and then we're gonna fold this back over so it should look something like that all right so now flipping this back over now this should look the way that any normal pair of jeans looks so I can fold this over a little bit I can unzip my pants and then I'm gonna fold this back and I can see my fly is perfectly where it's supposed to be this zips all the way down everything is nice and flat this is a perfect zipper on a pair of jeans and there's one more optional thing that I've never seen in a pattern but I've always seen it on store-bought pants so I'm gonna show you how to do that right now so something I noticed when I started making pants was when I unzipped it sometimes the fly would get folded in half or it would get jammed in the zipper and it would get stuck and stuff like that and that was really bothering me so I noticed on store-bought pants there was always a little like diagonal stitch right here and I figured out that that was to keep the fly on this bottom corner fixed into place at the bottom so that it wouldn't fold in half and it would keep it fixed right there and I do that on all my pants now and it really helps so what I'm gonna do is just put a pin on the left side of the fly through all layers here just to make sure that stays nice and fixed into place there so now what I'm going to do is just do a like back and forth back stitch type of thing between this stitch here and this stitch here kind of at a diagonal angle and that's gonna lock that fly into place so that it never moves and it's gonna look nice and flat now I'm just gonna feed my pants all the way up to where that curve is right there and about an inch to the right of where our center seam is I'm just gonna line up my needle and I'm gonna actually lower this by hand to make sure it goes right and where those stitches are and then I'm just gonna sew right up to the outside stitch here and then so it's four stitches back stitch front stitch back stitch front stitch and that is plenty so for the last time I'm just gonna clean up my stitches and we're gonna see how this looks alright so in the inside of our pants we just did this little bar stitch here it's gonna hold the fly in place so that it doesn't fold back or get jammed in your zipper and then if I look at the front we just have this little diagonal stitch right here and you can get creative and do a bunch of them so that it looks a little bit cooler or something like that if you want to or you don't have to do it at all alright everybody and that is it so as one last little test I am just going to unzip the front of these jeans pull this aside the fly is good I know it's not going to fold back in half because we've got that stitch there and I hope I was able to keep this as simple as possible again I was really happy to use the new brother s t-150 HDH it is a heavy-duty machine but it can handle garments and jeans no problem if you have any questions about this particular project please let me know in the comments and I really appreciate all your support and all those of you who have subscribed to the channel I am planning on doing a full build tutorial of how to make a pair of jeans from start to finish but I wanted to do this zipper video independently because it can be kind of tricky and I wanted to go into a lot of depth again if you have any other questions please let me know otherwise thank you so much for watching and I hope to see you guys in the next video

Channel: Tock Custom

Views: 32,114

Keywords: how to use a sewing machine, how to sew, how to sew a zipper, how to sew a zipper into jeans, how to sew a zipper into pants, how to repair a zipper, how to make custom jeans, how to make pants, how to sew pants, sewing zippers, sewing tutorial, zipper tutorial, custom zipper tutorial, sewing a zipper into pants, tock custom, tockcustom, brothersews, brother sewing machine, ST150HDH, brothersewspartner, heavy duty sewing, making jeans, how to make jeans, how to sew jeans, coffee

Id: h3NY4y-I6AY

Length: 34min 4sec (2044 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 01 2020