Monday, January 09, 2006

zipper progress

So, I haven't worked on the dresses for two days. I really don't have that much left to do...I just need to do it. I need to sew the lining in Heather's dress, sew the sleeves in Heather's and Tonya's dress, have Mom do all the hand work, and then we just need to hem all 3 dresses.
Tomorrow I resolve to do better. These dresses need to get done, because I am ready to work on THE dress!

Warning: the following may not make any sense to non-sews. (or to those who sew for that matter!) But it now makes perfect sense to me!

For some weeks now Mom and I have been thinking, debating, even arguing about how we are going to go about inserting the zipper in my dress. Our problem is that we want to use an invisible zipper because it looks so much better then a lapped zipper, but we also want to do the hem where we sew the satin and lining right sides together to finish the edges, thus reducing the work of hemming...and we could not figure out how to make that work-- because of the necessity of keeping that back seam open all the way to the bottom to insert the zipper.

So, yesterday Mom and I went to a bridal fair in OKC and the lady from Helen Enox, the bridal fabric store here where we bought our fabric, was there with a booth. She was amazing! I asked her about the zipper and she said to just leave the seam open all the way down, put in the zipper as normal, then match my skirt bottom seams together with the dress on the inside, sew all the way around the circumference leavning a 12inch section open to turn the dress..and that can be sewn by hand or machine later.

It was a classic lightbulb moment. I was astonished. Why didn't I think of that?


Jessica

1 comment:

  1. May I suggest you use one of the zipper tutorials on my site? It's how we do it in the industry (not the way that "experts" or sewing magazines say we do it). You can find all of the tutorials by clicking "tutorials index" in the left side bar under "admin" at http://www.fashion-incubator.com
    good luck on your project.

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