I’ve been slowly working my way through deep cleaning my house. After 3 weeks in the kitchen I couldn’t take the space anymore, so I started working on other rooms (still have kitchen back splashes, baseboards, and the oven to clean, but I’m doing a little bit of that every couple days or so). I’ve done the dining room and made good headway in the master bedroom.
On the first day of the master bedroom I found my forgotten (and full) “to-repair” basket, within which lay (among other things) a vest of the Dearliest’s that needed a new zipper. I will not embarrass myself completely by sharing how long the vest sat in the repair basket, and moreso how long I forgot I even HAD a repair basket.
I’m a royal beginner to sewing, all things considered, so my first step was to ask the Dearliest if he knew how to replace zippers in existing garments (he taught me a lot of sewing basics, so I figured there was a chance!). But no, he did not, so I took to the internet for learning.
These are the site pages I found most helpful:
Beginner’s Sewing Project: How to Replace a Broken Jacket Zipper
How to Shorten a Zipper (because the replacement zipper we have is several inches longer than needed)
Zipper Shortening & Stops – Part 4 of Zippers Explained in Detail (I watched this with no sound, thusly I can’t comment on the auditory instruction. Sometimes people talking in how-to videos distract me.)
Once I felt like I had a handle on the concept I sat down with my seam ripper and started ripping away. It took me about 10 minutes to discover that the zipper on the vest had THREE rows of stitching (two of which were hidden/ invisible seams), which instantly made it harder for me.
20 minutes of slaving and eye-straining yielded me this:
At which point I turned to the Dearliest and asked if the vest was worth it to him for me to invest the time and energy into the project. I was (am!) happy to do it, but if it wasn’t something he was going to really wear or use I had plans to rethink the project.
Once I got the bottom inch started, it actually went a little faster. In another 20 minutes I ripped out most of 2 of the seams on that side, so I’m hopeful that if I dedicate 10-15 minutes a day to the vest I’ll have the old zipper out in another week or so.
Then I need to track down my zipper foot for my sewing machine and I get to learn all about switching feet! Because I’ve never done that before.
#sewing #adventure #notasboringasitsounds
Creative Wending 
Zippers can be a pain but they get easier as time goes on. The reason there were so many lines of stitching is because there are a couple of steps to putting in a standard straight zipper. If you purchased a zipper, these steps would be spelled out for you on the package…and you might want to do that just to have them. Zippers don’t cost much and having one laying around isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Anyway, definitely track down that zipper foot. It will relieve the blood pressure exercise from trying to sew a zipper without one. Take your time is my only other advice. 🙂