How to Use a Zipper Foot

Hey Everyone! This is Sarah with Sewingpartsonline.com. Today I am going to show you how to use and install the zipper foot. So, this is our standard zipper foot this is the left side and the right side. The two things you'll see about this is it's got one big bar When you're working on the left side of the zipper you clamp your shank right here Right side, clamp your shank right here. As you can see, it has this opening that lets you get as close to the zipper as you can without snagging the teeth. So, lets go ahead and install it. Take off the foot you already have And clamp it on This is one side. Go ahead and lift it up. You can just put it right over onto the other side Right now we are going to prep our zipper to be sewn on I've got two pieces of fabric. Folded over already If your fabric frays, which this one does you might want to serge the ends or zigzag the ends before you even put it on to the zipper So put it on right here. ideally, you would baste the zipper in place first but for demonstrations I'm just going to pin it in and when we get it over to the machine our standard zipper [foot] is going to sew right along this edge so that it catches the top fabric and the zipper without messing up any of the metal teeth. So, here we go. I've already sewn the one side, just to show you and the different widths you can do. Right here I have sewn really, really close. Very narrow. back here you can move it out a little bit further and you're still getting a nice, even stitch. It just depends how close you want it. If you're too afraid that it's not going to knick the fabric; if you want more of the blue of the zipper showing, It's all personal preference either way You're lining right up against the metal zipper and it's looking neat. First, what we're going to do is unzip this. Which I did for the other side too. I unzipped it first. Make sure that your zipper foot is on the right [correct] side of the bar You can see right here I have this little notch right here that's lining up with the metal teeth of the zipper This would be for really, really close. Or, you can go out just a little bit further and it'll glide right along this edge. Either way, you just want to make sure you have either this side of the bar; See that wouldn't work. So, you can see it works on this side and lines up right nice. like i said, ideally, you would have this basted in already. But, we're just going to go ahead and cheat. There we go. Do a couple back stitches. So, right now you see the metal teeth are going only this outside corner. If i wanted it a little closer I'll just move it closer. So, you don't have much of the blue zippers showing. we can go a little bit further out here. as you get to this big bulk of the zipper just going to have to move a little on the outside back stitch. And there you go. You have a zipper sewn in. You can also go across right here if you want to. You can stitch right across here if you feel like it. Depending on your project, this might be this may be inserted and covered up into a different seam. There we go. Perfect. So the cool thing about the standard zipper foot is it really helps you get into any situation where you have a really, really close edge to get to. If I wanted to put this big cord on a piece of fabric I need my zipper foot. Or you can do it by hand but who want to do that. so you put it in here get as close as you can and you can sew right there like this or you can move your foot over to right along the edge. then further move it around whenever you want it to be. We'll go ahead and start sewing. You can see how closely you can get to any kind of big cord or trim. Effortlessly, I got this little piece of fabric onto this big, big trim. So, that was the zipper foot. To purchase your own zippers or zipper foot, visit us online at sewingpartsonline.com or on facebook at facebook/sewingpartsonline.