Battling Zippers Again

I really should have been filming myself with all these zippers because it would have made for great entertainment. And I should have known that sewing them into these hoodies would not be straightforward and easy. It could have been, but it wasn’t.

The pattern calls for a different length of separating nylon zipper for each size. The issue is that zippers come in predetermined lengths—12", 16", 20", etc—but some of the hoodie sizes in this pattern require lengths of 13", 15", or 17". Nylon zippers are easy to cut to length; I do it all the time when making bags or zipper pouches. In fact, nylon zippers come as three-yard lengths of zipper tape for precisely those situations. Metal zippers are not quite as accommodating, but they also can be shortened by removing teeth with a pair of pliers.

For these hoodies, however, I couldn’t just cut the tape to length. I needed to remove teeth without shortening the length of the zipper tape because the excess tape gets folded over in a later step. The pattern suggested taking the teeth out with a pair of pliers, much as shortening a metal zipper. That was tedious and messy and resulted in a shredded zipper. After destroying one zipper, I went to YouTube to see if anyone had a better idea. I found a video where a guy suggested slicing the teeth off the zipper tape. He took his pocketknife and slid the blade between the teeth and the zipper tape and cut the stitching that holds the teeth onto the fabric. The teeth fell away cleanly without damaging the zipper tape.

We have a joke here that “I carry my Leatherman on the husband.” I do keep a Leatherman in the Jeep, but I didn’t want to go out to the garage to get it. Instead, I borrowed a razor blade from the husband’s shaving supplies. I carefully slid it between the teeth and the fabric and cut the stitches and voilà!—the teeth fell away cleanly. I cut off the extra teeth and tossed them, then crimped new zipper stops onto the top of the tape to keep the zipper pull from coming off.

[The husband said that demonstrating that technique could be my first YouTube video. We’ll see.]

I’ve got the zipper installed in one hoodie. Yay me.

I need to get another zipper to replace the one I destroyed, and then I can install the zipper in the other hoodie. I think I am going to buy myself some of those razor blades—the Harry’s brand from Walmart—to keep in my sewing room. I can think of a lot of uses for them.

Now that I’ve done this once and know what needs to happen, putting zippers into knit hoodies will be a breeze. Learn from my mistakes.

********

The husband finished replacing the mouse-chewed wiring to the chicken coop when he got home from work yesterday. Rodents are such destructive little animals. I can’t think of any good use for mice and ground squirrels except as food for animals higher up on the food chain.

He also told me that the bunny that hangs out under our porch is now completely white. (I haven’t seen it for a few weeks.) Snow is coming.