 Hello and welcome to Professor Pinkushin in this tutorial. I'm going to show you how to install an invisible zipper. You can see my zipper right here. I'm also going to go over some of the things you need to know if you're doing a zipper with a lining. Also if you do not have a separate attachment for the invisible zipper for your machine, I'm going to go over how to use this universal foot that you can pick up at your fabric store. For my example, I'm going to be demonstrating with Buttercup Pattern 5949. So let's go ahead and get started. Here's a little bit of a closer view of the invisible zipper. So before we start sewing it in, we need to do a little bit of prep work. So let me just say that we're looking at the right side of the zipper. The side where you can actually see the little tab, that's the right side. If we flip this over and you can actually see the coils or the teeth of the zipper, that is the wrong side. So the first thing is, after you take it out of your package, depending on how long it is, like this one's very long, you'll see it has all these creases in it. You're going to want to unzip your zipper all the way. You're going to flip it over to the wrong side. So you're looking at the coils. And then you're going to press it with your iron. Now you want to be very careful, especially since these are normally made out of plastic and we don't want to melt them or burn them or anything. So you want to have your iron on the synthetic setting and you're just going to lightly press it to try to get out some of these creases. The next thing we're going to do is we're going to prep the garment for the zipper. So you're going to be looking at the area that the zipper is going to be going in. Now this is the garment that I'm working on. So this is my dress and this is my center back seam. I just have it sideways so you can see more of it. The dress is right side out. This is the inside of my dress, the lining. What I'm going to do is we're just going to ignore my threads right here for now. Now you're going to baste whatever your seam line is right along the seam line. So for me, I'm doing 5-8s of an inch seam allowance. So from the edge, I'm going to go in 5-8s of an inch and I'm going to do a basting stitch. And you're going to do it for the full length of whatever the zipper length is. So I start here at the top and then I stop until I get to where the zipper supposedly ends on my dress. Sometimes you have a triple notch or a double notch or some sort of mark on your garment that indicates where the zipper should end. But you can always just take your zipper, lay it down, and then that'll give you a good idea. If you do your basting stitch a little bit longer than that, then that's fine. Now I'm not actually sewing anything together. I'm taking this side and I'm stitching my basting stitch 5-8s of an inch down. And then I'm going to take this side and then I'm doing the same thing. So they're both going to stay separate. All we're doing is just doing a stitching line that we're going to use as a guideline to put our zipper in. For the basting stitch, you want to use something that's going to stand out. So you can see I'm using a contrasting thread of orange, something that's going to be able to be seen on the right side and the wrong side of my dress. Now because it's a basting stitch, you do not have to do any back stitching and you're using the largest stitch on your machine or the longest stitch. So again, we're just using this as a guideline and we can eventually take this thread out when we're done using it. Okay, so we've done our prep work. Now I'm looking at the back of the dress where the zipper is going in. So we have the dress right side out. Again, the white is the inside of my dress or the wrong side and the blue is the right side of my dress or the outside of the garment. That's going to line up my seams here. You're going to go ahead and grab your zipper. Now it should be placed right side up. So I'm looking at the right side of the zipper and remember that's the side where you can see the little tab in the wrong side is the side with the coils. So this is how it's going to be when it's inside of your dress. That's why I'm placing it this way so we can make sure we're doing everything the right way. And once you have it right side up, you should have it unzipped all the way down and it really doesn't matter if you start with the left side or the right side. But just for this demonstration, I'm going to start on the left side of the garment. So I'm going to take the right side of the dress. I'm going to move it out of the way. The right side of the zipper, move it out of the way. So we have left side of garment, left side of zipper. Now again, the zipper is right side up. We have this orange thread or whatever your contrasting thread is right here is our basing stitch. This is where the guidelines are going to come into play. The coils of the zipper need to be placed right on the thread. But we need to make sure it goes right side to right side of the garment. So I'm going to take my zipper. I'm going to flip it over. So again, right side of the zipper to the right side of the garment and making sure that the coil or the teeth of the zipper end up right on that basting stitch. The right on my orange stitch. Now, you need to make sure that the top of the zipper, so that's not the tape, but the actual teeth or the coil of the zipper need to be placed 3 ¼ of an inch down from the top of your garment or where the zipper is. So I'm just having my sewing gauge here marked at the 3 ¼ line. I'm going to put my coil right there. Grab my straight pin so I can start pinning this into place just to hold it for me. And then I'm just going to go down my basting stitch and just make sure that the coils are lined up right on that stitch. So that's why we did it. It kind of just makes it a little bit easier so you don't have to keep measuring. And then I'm just going to pin it into place. And I'm just going to go all the way down to the end of the zipper. Okay, so we're getting ready to sew our invisible zipper in our garment. Now for this, you actually need a foot in your machine that's specific to invisible zippers. You can't just use a regular zipper foot. You need an invisible zipper foot and if your machine has one, follow the manual for putting it on. If you don't have one, it's fine. I don't have one either. And you can actually purchase this universal invisible zipper foot that comes with a kit with all these pieces from your fabric store and I'll show you how to put it on. The first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to go ahead and remove my needle just because I don't want it to get in the way. And I'm also going to remove my foot. So my foot is attached to this plastic part which is attached to the main shank. We want to leave everything off except for the shank part right here. So I have a screw over here. I've already unscrewed it and I'm just going to remove this and you can see all that's left is the shank. Now we're going to go ahead and look at the pieces. So everybody is going to use this white part. This is going to be our new presser foot here. And you'll see that it has a hole on one side and if we look at the other side, there's no hole. The side with the hole is going to be in the front towards you and the side without the hole is going to be towards the back. And then you have this one piece that's kind of in the middle that kind of adjusts the foot. This piece has a little groove here. So this foot now needs one of these pieces to fit in that groove that's going to attach to the shank. Now for everybody's machine, it may be a little bit different. That's why they give us all these pieces and one of these should work for your machine. So everybody uses this and then you pick one of these pieces. For the blue one, these are for the older machines. So when you thread your needle and you're threading it from left to right or from right to left, you're going to use the blue one. Most of the newer machines like mine, you're threading your needle and you're coming from the front and then it comes out towards the back. So if you have one of those machines, you don't have to use the blue one. So we'll just get this one out of the way. So now we're left with the yellow and the red. To figure this out, you're going to lower the shank just like you lower your presser foot and you're going to measure the distance between the hole where your screw was and the needle plate. So from here to here, you're going to measure. If it is a half inch, you're going to use the red one. So it would be red with white. If it's an inch, then you're going to use the yellow one. Now you'll notice on the yellow one that we have grooves on both sides because this piece is actually a two for one. If you look at the yellow piece, you'll notice that there's an X on one side, which is kind of hard to see here. But if you look at it, you'll see one side has an X. So this is because it could either be used with the one inch bond shank or it could be used with a slant needle. So if you want to use a slant needle, so if your needle is slanted, you're going to take your piece, you're going to fit it in the groove. See, I'll just fit in the groove there. Notice my X right there. So if your X is furthest away from the white piece, that's going to be for the slant needle. Now I'm going to take it out. I'm going to flip it, stick it back in the groove. Now I have the X pretty much right next to the white piece. So that is going to be if you have a one inch distance between your hole and your shank and the needle plate. Now I have a half inch. So I'm going to go ahead and use the red one. So we're going to grab my white piece. I'm going to grab the red and I have the little groove that I'm going to fit these two pieces together. Now I have a part in my shank where it kind of goes in a little bit and then it comes out. So this is going to fit in that bottom part and you're just going to slide it up. You're going to stick your screw back in. Then you can go ahead, put your foot back down, making sure that it's resting comfortably. And then I can go ahead, put in my needle, rethread my machine and it's good to go. Now you do need to make sure that your needle is going to go into that hole. Remember when I showed you, let me pull this out again. You have this hole right here. You need to make sure that your needle goes into that hole and doesn't just hit the plastic. Otherwise you're going to break your needle or it's just not going to be good. So if you need to, you can lift it up. Make sure it goes in. You can just turn the knob to make sure that your needle is going to go in. If you need to make any adjustments, you can go ahead and just slide this to where it needs to be and then just put it back down. So I'm going to go ahead and put my screw in, thread my machine and then we're going to go ahead and get started on someone to rezip around. If you look on the front of your foot, let me just lift this up here for a second. You'll notice that there are two grooves. So one of these grooves is going to fit over your zipper teeth or your zipper coil and you just need to make sure, you see how that one just goes right over that, that your needle is going right next to it on the side of the zipper tape. So in this particular case, I'm using the left groove and my needle is on the right. Then you're just going to follow it down and you should be using a matching zipper and matching thread and all that, but you'll notice I'm using a contrasting one just so it's a little bit easier to see what I'm doing. So you're just going to sew until you can't sew any further because this is eventually going to bump up into your zipper slider which will prevent you from sewing anymore and then you'll just stop with that side. You'll notice at this point that my dress is now flipped wrong side out. So this is the zipper we just put in. Now everything's just on the opposite side since I flipped everything out. So I'm going to take the next side of my zipper and I'm just going to, here's the end of my zipper. Just make sure that everything's smooth and nothing is twisted because now we're going to stick it to the other side. So I'm just going to flip this like this so I can see the right side again. The teeth of the zipper are going to line up with the orange thread on this other side. And again, you want to measure and make sure you're doing it three quarters of an inch down. You don't want to just kind of gas and be like, oh, that's close enough because in your zipper is going to be crooked and it's not going to work right. That's why it's always important when you're sewing to be as accurate as possible. So everybody is my sewing gauge. Making sure that the coil part, the teeth part is actually three quarters of an inch down. And then I'm going to pin this into place. Again, the teeth line up with your basting stitch and then I'm just going to pin this all the way down and then we're going to take it back to the machine. And so this side, when I'm sewing the other side, you'll notice now I'm using the right groove over here and my needle is to the left. If you're wondering what to do at the top of the zipper, what you can do, you're going to take the tape, you're going to fold it back. So now the raw edge is hidden by your fabric and then you can just tack it into place. You can hand so that if you want, you can see I've already done it on this side. Now we're going to be focusing on the bottom of the zipper. So you can see this is just kind of hanging out here. It's not really stitched to anything. So what we're going to do first is finish the center back seam. This is the rest of the center back seam which wasn't stitched at this point. It was just kind of open. And I went ahead and closed my zipper. You can see it's already closed. I'm going to take what's left of the zipper. I'm going to pull it out of the way. I'm going to go ahead and pin the rest of my center back seam and I'm going to go ahead and stitch my 5-8 seam allowance. You want to try to get as high up as you can and you can actually keep the invisible zipper foot on for this part. So we're going to take it to the machine so I can show you. But basically starting up as high as we can get, I know it's a little bit difficult sometimes because the zipper gets in the way. And then just stitch seam allowance down to the bottom of your garment. You can see that I went ahead and left this universal zipper foot on here and I just slid it over. So now my needle is going over to this groove that's on the right hand side. So it kind of works as now a regular zipper foot. So again, I try to get up as high as I could in that one area. I pulled my zipper tape out of the way. So I want to make sure that I'm not stitching through that. Just move this pin out of here and then I'm just going to go and continue on with my center back seam. Now after you get past this zipper part, you can go ahead and let go. And if you want, you can backstitch and then change this to a regular foot if you wish. Or you can just continue going on. It's not going to hurt anything. And just finish this center back seam. Here's my finished center back seam. So the last thing we need to do is tack down the rest of our zipper to our seam allowance. So we're only doing it to the seam only, not to your garment fabric. So you can see it's pressed open. I'm just going to pin it into place and I'm only going to... You can either do it by hand or you can do it to machine and just sew here and then sew along on this side as well. So again, I'm going to pull this away. So I'm only sewing here, not sewing through anything else. So that's going to keep our zipper in place at the bottom. If you end up tacking down the bottom of the zipper with your machine, make sure that you switch to a zipper foot. It's just a lot easier to use. You can go ahead and just do a regular stitch. I forget to backstitch. And again, remember that you're only doing it to the seam allowance only. So I'm going to do this side and I'm going to do the same thing on the other side as well. So I briefly want to talk about what do you do if you have a line up on the back of the zipper. So we're going to pretend like we have a separate lining, and this is just my little scrap that I'm showing with. But for a lining, usually it's going to be attached either at the waistband or at the neckline. It really depends on your garment. But it's usually made separate from your main garment. And usually where the seam is for the zipper, it's going to be the same for the lining. So let's pretend like this is my center back seam. I stopped sewing here. The rest of my lining is open in order to accommodate the zipper. But usually what they have you do is you're going to fold your lining over whatever your seam allowance is. So in my case, I folded from the right side to the wrong side, five eighths of an inch and I pressed it and I did it on both sides. You have your lining usually right side up. This is so we're not looking at any of the seam allowance of the lining. The lining is going to be covered and we have this nice folded edge that's going to be on either side of the zipper. So everything is going to be hidden away and looks really nice and neat. Now at the bottom where I have my seam starting in my lining, that's going to be placed at the bottom of my zipper here. And I'm going to start pinning my lining to my seam allowance only. Like we talked about in that last part where we're only stitching to the seam allowance, it's the same thing with the lining. You don't want to actually put stitches through the garment. We just want to make sure that the lining is tacked down to the zipper tape so everything is enclosed. Now you do need to be careful that you don't take your lining and you place it over the tape or too close to the teeth because as you're zipping up and down, it can get caught in that. So that's one thing you want to be aware of. So I'm going to go ahead, start pinning this in and you can see I'm just going right alongside of it. And then I would do the same thing on the other side. So this gets placed at the bottom and then I'm going to start pinning on the other side to the seam allowance only. And then we'll get a little closer and I'll show you how to hand sew it into place. Sewing my lining to my zipper tape, I'm going to use a slip stitch which is hand sewn. So I have my needle thread here and I've actually already started. So right now, it's actually coming out of my zipper tape. So the next part, I'm going to go through the folded edge of the lining. So just the lining only and I try to get as close to that folded edge as possible. So that way the thread doesn't show as much. Now that I've done that, I'm going to go through the zipper tape and you don't have to go through all the seam allowance. You just need to just go through the zipper tape only if you want. The main thing is you just want to make sure that the lining is attached to that zipper tape. So now I'm going to go back through the folded edge of the lining. So you're just zigzagging between the two sides. So it's going to go lining, zipper tape, lining, zipper tape, lining, zipper tape. So now I'm done with the lining. You want to make your stitches small, pull pretty tight and then your stitches should look pretty neat. Just wanted to give you a quick look of the right side of my zipper for my buttered dress. Now the only thing you can see of course is this tab up here. I definitely recommend that you use a matching zipper. I just use a contrasting one so it would be a little bit easier for you to see. So when you finish, I highly recommend doing a nice good press so we can definitely make this look a little bit crisper and neater. So we can just press that down. It'll look really nice and neat. Also if you have your basting stitches showing, go ahead and remove those. New tutorials are released weekly so please subscribe to be notified at the next release. Make sure to check out our other videos and visit professorpincushion.com to view our complete library with well over 200 sewing video tutorials. In our exclusive premium content, our premium membership is only $5 a month for unlimited access and only available at professorpincushion.com. Also don't forget to download our mobile app for videos on the go. Thanks for watching.