How to Sew a Zipper, TWO ways

[Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] hi i'm dana welcome to made every day if you've ever been afraid to sew with a zipper put those days behind you today i'm going to show you how to sew with a basic zipper so let's do it zippers are a great closure that give a polished look to your project and they're all around us you'll find them on clothing like this little dress that i made for my daughter you find them on bags and on purses you even find them on tents and sleeping bags and if you've never sewn one it can start to feel a little overwhelming like what kind do i need what color do i need well the color part is easy just pick one that speaks to you i would love to sew with all of these here but if you want your zipper to be a little more concealed in your project if you're using a white fabric you might choose a white zipper if you want your zipper to give a little pop of color you might choose yellow like this one here it just depends on the look you're going for now let's talk about some different kinds you can find one with metal teeth like the zipper i just showed you and you can find some with plastic teeth some are super long some are super short some are really small made for zippers in your pants and you can buy them at the fabric store you can buy them online i find that the ones online give you a few more different options today what i'm going to do is show you how to sew a basic zipper two different ways the first way is what you might use for something like a little purse and the second way is how you might sew it into a piece of clothing so let's start with the first method [Music] i've got two pieces of fabric here and a zipper now let's talk about your zipper presser foot most machines come standard with a zipper foot my baby lock has two different versions and what it allows you is to sew really close to the teeth of the zipper without the presser foot getting in the way now this zipper foot is kind of just a half mini version of this other one this one allows me to position where i want it on my machine i could sew down this side by attaching it in this groove or if i attached it with the other groove i could sew down this side instead so take your zipper place it face down or right sides together with your fabric line it up with the edge here and if you're making like a little zipper pouch of this you'd want to cut your fabric the same length as your zipper now i'm going to attach this with these little wonder clips you can use binder clips or you can just use pins but these work pretty good and you can see once we've sewn down here i can open this up what it's going to do it's going to give us a nice little edge there so let's sew it together now i'm attaching my zipper foot here mine just pops right onto it now the pull of the zipper at the top will get in the way when we sew down both sides so what we're going to do is bypass that at the beginning and we'll start sewing somewhere down here sew down then we'll go back and sew that part again if we didn't do that and started sewing up here we'd kind of get a little wonky line as we went around that so place it in your machine there we go and then i'm going to line up part of my presser foot with the edge of the fabric just to give myself a guideline as i sew down so i make sure i sew in a straight line do a little forward and back stitch at the beginning now you might want to go a little slow here and if you feel like you're going too fast you can always adjust up here with your speed control that'll make sure that your foot pedal doesn't go faster than you want when you get down to the bottom do a little back stitch cut your threads now you can see we still need to sew this top part so take your zipper and just unzip it a little bit so it's past the area that we already sewed and then let's do the top part put it back in your machine do a little back stitch and sew right down along that same line go down until the two parts meet okay let's see how it looks lay it out here let's zip it up so we can see better and look at that good job see you're getting zippers now okay now what you'll probably want to do is to press this flat with an iron but be careful if you sew to the zipper that has plastic teeth don't ever get your iron over those plastic feet one more thing that you could do is to sew a little top stitch right along here and that gives it a nice polished look as well what i'm gonna do is attach my other side we're gonna do the exact same way place it with the right sides together we'll flip it over here so you can see just like that and make sure you're matching up your fabric underneath if this was a little bag or something like that you really want to be precise and those kind of things then let's pin or clamp them together we'll do the same thing this time i'm going to start at the bottom here and sew up until i get to this pole stop and then zip it open again you want to make sure that you're sewing with the same seam allowance here that you did on the other side so that your zipper is evenly spaced in your bag [Music] i'm going to kind of show you here now you can see when i get to this point this pole would start to kind of push my foot that way that's how i know i definitely want to stop in fact i think i went too far here but that's okay now you can see how it looks so let's come off and unzip it okay we'll unzip it just a little bit like that fold it back over and sew the end [Music] okay let's see how the finished product looks that looks really great again press it top stitch do whatever you can see how wonderful it looks so you zip it open and close and the nice thing about this method is that you can decide how exposed you want the zipper to be i kind of did a wider seam allowance that you could see a lot of that green there in the next zipper i'm going to show you how you might do a basic zipper that's a little more concealed it's not completely invisible that's actually a different type of zipper but it will hide better in a garment say you want to sew a zipper into the back of your skirt or the back of a dress rather than cutting one big piece of fabric you might cut two pieces of fabric like this place them right sides together sew them down and press that seam open now how do we get our zipper into that seam well i'll show you this is a seven inch zipper here which means it's seven inches from the pole down to the bottom and that's going to fit real nicely in here because it's a little shorter than my end and what you want to do is place it with the right side facing down on that seam and i'm starting about a half inch from the top just so i have some room for a seam allowance at the top place the teeth of the zipper right on the line of that seam and pin it in place and pin that first one and then i'll flip it around and show you here what i'm doing is making it go right down on top of there the whole way the more precise i can be the better then i'll continue pinning this now there's other methods you could do i've seen people maybe put tape on here somehow and pull the tape off afterward so do whatever works for you okay now we're ready to sew take your fabric over to your machine i have moved my zipper foot over to the other side go past that pole like we did last time place your presser foot down you don't want to be so close that you're sewing over these zipper teeth in the middle okay we're ready to sew do a little forward and back stitch and i should also point out that i'm using white thread here because i want to show you how that line looks if you were doing this on your own project you'll probably want to use some thread that coordinates with your fabric so you don't see it when you're done sewing now i'm reaching the end you can see the end right there that little metal piece i'm gonna go and i'm using my hand turn right here just so i can get right where i want it okay right there i'm gonna lift my presser foot pivot and turn sew across the bottom and go back down the other side [Music] lift pivot turn and do the same thing okay now again i want to stop when i get close to this pole here that's a good spot right there do a little back stitch cut my threads love that little cutting button okay let's see what it looks like if we look at the back you can see that i have made a little rectangle around our zipper here and if i flip it over to the front you can see it there as well now again you'll want to use a thread color that coordinates with your fabric i just did this you could see it now before we finish off this top here we need to expose our zippers so that we can actually use it so grab your seam ripper and we're going to rip that seam open it helps in this step if you've sewn your seam with a wider stitch like i don't know about a five okay you can see i'm just doing it under there a few threads at a time you don't really want to just go right down or you're probably going to rip through the bottom there and no matter how many times i sew zippers i always find this part of it kind of fun because it's exciting to see your zipper showing through that's when you know you're a sewing nerd right ah pretty beautiful okay you want to pull these little strings out but let's finish off those top pieces turn it back over go to your machine matches up right there do a back stitch cut your threads and do the other side [Music] and there you go look how beautifully that zips open and closed and you can see if it was on the back of the dress it's really hidden in there you don't really notice it's there until you have to use it so you see sewing with zippers wasn't so hard after all so have fun get creative and try to use them in different ways for more ideas and tutorials visit my website madeeveryday.com and for more information on sewing machines go to babylock.com where it's all for the love of sewing i'll see you next time [Music] you

Channel: MADE Everyday

Views: 1,399,898

Keywords: zipper, how to sew a zipper, how to sew a basic zipper, how to install a zipper, zipper foot, zipper presser foot, how to use a zipper presser foot, how to sew a concealed zipper, how to sew an invisible zipper, invisible zipper, how to install an invisible zipper, Sewing (Industry), how to sew a zipper in a dress, how to sew a zipper in a skirt, how to sew a zipper pouch, zipper pouch, how to install a zipper in a dress, how to install a zipper in a skirt

Id: oHDDhUzIXPY

Length: 10min 59sec (659 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 28 2015