More than one way to skin a cat

As I had mentioned before, the zipper on this dress needed to be replaced.

I am old enough to have worn lots of dresses with old metal zippers in my dresses in my childhood. Those metal zippers were persnickety. They tended to pinch skin . Often on really old zippers the tape can wear out and the slightest pull can have the teeth falling out like those of an old rummy.

When my friend and I attempted to put the dress on the dummy, the zipper rebelled spitting teeth all over my living room.

I needed to replace the zipper. One of my sisters took sewing sewing classes at the local Singer sewing machine store. The women who taught there used to teach their students that there was only one correct way to do a sewing task. There was only one way to install a zipper. That, is a big fat lie.

If you are the sort of sewing geek that actually examines and tries to reverse engineer how the zippers on your clothes are installed you will see that there area many ways to install zippers even assuming the identical usage, like here, as in seam back zipper.

I usually approach such a task trying to figure out the method that will be easiest for me and look the least terrible. A method I have used often and often successfully was described a long ago issue of Threads magazine where you back stitch the zipper into place by hand. The stitch itself is strong and if you do it carefully, you get a pretty little line of stitched dots outlining the zipper.

I tried.

It isn't the best job I've seen but it was tolerable until I got to the bottom of the second line of stitching.

The fabric shifted slightly as I had worked leaving an ugly bloopy bubble.

I unstitched my work. I am leaving all cursing out of this description.

I then reached back into the back corner of my brain where sewing instructions from old sewing books live.

I basted the seam shut. Then I basted the zipper in place.

Then I machine stitched the zipper to it's correct place.

After removing all of the basting stitches, I ended up with something tolerable.

If I had had a long enough zipper in green I would have used that. The white will have to do.

The task is complete.

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