Lessons
Lesson Info
Cutting the Interfacing
So the first thing we're going to do when we set up two so for this project the sewers heparin, that means we're going to need to change to our zipper foot, so I'm gonna take this foot on most sewing machines. They're snap on, snap off feats, you can press this little red button sometimes it's a lever sometimes it's a little black button, you can press it in and the regular straight stitch foot will drop off. I'm gonna have you guys if you have a foot like mine, I'm gonna have you attached to the left hand bar of your foot, and if you have a sewing machine that looks a little different from mine, you can check in your manual to make sure you've got the correct foot and that you're attaching it to your machine correctly. For this entire project, we're going to use a straight stitch so you can keep it on the straight stitch. We're going to use the length of three, so we want to jump it up a little bit from normal because we're going to be going through lots of thicknesses of fabric stitc...
h length three is going to be just right for what we're doing, so remember, we have the zipper poll and we have the zipper stopper and these are made out of metal, so we don't want to so anywhere near them I'm going to start out making some marks on my zipper just below the stopper, so I have a place for my fabric tow line up, and this is going to make sure that I don't end up sewing through parts of this slipper that I don't want to. I'm going to use my seem gauge, I said it at half a niche, and I'm going to make a mark on my zipper a half a nin inch below the bottom of my stopper, so make it so you can really see it with your chalk there that's what it's gonna look like and then I'm going to take one of my lining fabric pieces, and I'm gonna lay the zipper on top of my lining fabric. I want the wrong side of my zipper to the right side of my fabric align the edge of my fabric right up with my chalk mark there, and I'm going to start to pin the edge of the zipper tape to the edge of my lining. Fabric mason. Even again, I like to put my pins in perpendicular to the edge of the fabric for guinness. So this first line of stitching at the one quarter inch seam allowance on your sewing machine, so if you find that on your machine, you can put a piece of blue tape there to help you see it. Some machines that quarter inch mark it's easy to see in some machines it's not so easy to see so nice and pinned and I'm gonna back stitch because I want this whole project to stay together and not fall apart so right along the quarter inch mark a little backstage and all the way down make sure you take your pins out as you get to them you don't want to so over pins metal sewing medal is not a great plan and right to the edge of the fabric little back stitch so that's the first part sewing it a quarter of an inch really just secures this fabric hold it in place so that we can now use our outer fabric to make a sandwich, so I'm gonna take this out of fabric and I'm gonna layer it over the zipper so I've got the lining fabric the zipper with the teeth and the pole and the stopper facing up at me and I'm gonna lay my outer fabric right side facing down on top of all of that, lining up the edges of both fabrics and putting my pins through all the layers this time I'm going to use my three eights of an inch or one centimeter seem allowance to so few all the layers and that's going to be my permanent stitch this is going to get you right up close to the zipper teeth and that's actually, why we have a zipper foot there's, a little cutout carved out from the bottom of this foot that allows it to get really, really close to the bumpy part of the zipper and that's what we're going to do right now, something a line this up, I'm lining it up like I said with my one centimeter mark, and I'm gonna do it way down to the other end of the zipper you may notice while you're doing this, that the top fabric creates a little bubble before the foot, if you like, you can use and he's so until you've got laying around the point of your c, engage the point of your chalk pencil or your seam ripper toe hold this in place, so I'm going to use this point here to kind of hold it in place between the fins so it doesn't make too much of a bubble. If you notice it's starting to make a bubble, you want to spread that bubble out, so shove a little bit of it under the presser foot so that it doesn't become one big bubble. Lots of small bubbles are way better and then pull it out and trim your threads for the next step, we're going to go over to the iron so I can press these fabrics pointing away from the zipper. So we've stitched both sides of our fabric tour zipper and now it's ready to press them away from the zipper, so I want to take this fabric my lining fabric unfolded away from the zipper and use the edge of my iron to kind of slide it away from the zipper. I can pull it a little bit and make sure that I'm getting it right away from the zipper hamlin end up just like that and flatten it out, and then I'm going to flip it and do the same thing with my outer fabric. Sometimes it works well to finger press it, which literally means get in there with your fingers and press it flat a little bit first, before you get in there with the iron to press it. So now I want to make sure that that's right up against the edge of the fabric, nice and flat, and now we're going to take this back to the sewing machine into our tough stitching. The stitching is going to be about an eighth of an inch away from that folded edge of my fabric all the way down through both layers and through the zipper this is what's going to keep everything in place so it won't get in the way when you're zipping and unzipping your bag. So at this point I'm going to recommend that you put a couple of pins in along the fabric here toe hold this lining fabric out of the way sometimes it likes to sneak up and get stuck in your seem I'm going to say let's nip that in the bud a couple of pins along the edge toe hold that fabric in place and then everybody is gonna line up so we can so about an eighth of an inch away from this edge a great way of doing it mr look at the toe on your foot and keep it just a little bit away from the fold edge and you can see where my needle goes down that's exactly where I want to be to do my stitching you don't have to back stitch on the top stitch because it's already been sown and this is just decorative and now I'm going to repeat those steps for the other side of the zipper starting out with my lining fabric on the wrong side of the zipper and stitching at it a quarter of an inch, placing my outer fabric on the right side of the zipper and pinning and stitching through all the layers of the one centimeter mark on my machine so the last couple of things we need to do for the sipper right now this zipper opens on this end and these two engines can really fly around and make life tough so we want to secure that edge of the zipper together so I'm gonna have you slide the zipper poll up so it's even with the edges of the fabric and then about a quarter of an inch away from that make another shock mark on your zipper it's gonna be right about there and what we're going to do is sew this zipper tape together with a straight stitch forward back stitch forward back stitched just a couple of times forward and back to create our own stopper on this side that's going to make your life a lot easier when we go to so the tops of this bag together instead of having a zipper flying around all over it's going to be secured so I'm gonna line this up now so I'm gonna liver my press her foot and I'm going to so back and forth a couple of times over the super however you need to push it under their forward and then back again and that's going to close it up so you don't have to worry about it separating when we're sowing trim off your extra threads and one of the most important steps for this project is when you're finished sewing this edge of your zipper together you must unzip it till you get to about one inch away from the zipper stop this is ever has to be open to complete this project successfully so don't skip it
Class Materials
Bonus with Purchase
Ratings and Reviews
Jaime Baggett
This was such a fun class and I felt so confident once I finished the box zip bag! I just bought the class last week and I've already finished two larges. I had been wanting to learn how to sew a zipper for a while and this class was a perfect choice. I love the instructor, she's easy to follow and doesn't use weird, hard to understand terms. And she defines things that might be unknown. THANK YOU, SHAERIE!