Zippers -- Totally Not Mastered

Last night, after a lot of thought, I decided to pull out the machine and make two more cloth napkins (pictures coming later) and a zippered pencil case. Even though Sophy tells me all the cool little kids don't like cute stationary any more... (How did this happen?)



I have three different books at my house for referencing. One suggested I get some kind of mending tape to do the basting. The other suggested fabric glue, pinning, or hand basting to baste the zipper into place before hand. The last just assumed I knew what I was doing and roughly told me to baste it into place. I chose to hand-baste and I'm not sure that I'm happy with that.

I am going to try and get fabric glue for my next zipper project. Places where I was especially unhappy with this zipper? The top of the zipper. Also, I totally f'ing forgot to move from a basting stitch to a normal stitch when I was putting the zipper in, so this whole thing could fall apart at any moment.

In this next photo, you can see a tiny bit of the orange thread I used to baste!



I feel like I at least understand how to put in zippers now and I am tempted to try a real project with zippers.

BTW, I'm totally glad I made this. I stuck all my credit and gift cards and lipsticks into it and now I have an easy way to move the items in my bags from purse to purse without having a bunch of meaningless crap move too!