Saturday, May 08, 2010

Jumping for joy

I did a fly zipper! I have been sewing for a long time but, being lazy, I rarely try new things or new patterns. This year I challenged myself to sew 12 new patterns for myself. I think this is about 6 or 7 (the pleated blouse was a dud and I never quite completed it). Carolyn's challenge for this month is zippers, but I am pretty good at zippers, well the invisible ones. Having read Debbie Cook's fly tutorial, I was less scared of the scary fly. I even found a pattern like my go-to pants pattern but with a fly zipper. The pattern is # 107A from Burda 1/2006. The pattern even had front pockets, which I avoided in the past.
I found that with the fabric I was using, the pattern was much to wide. I had to take it in 1cm on each seam. Debbie's tute was amazing and i had a great looking zipper done in a flash. However, I was a little stumped with how to apply the facing. Burda's directions read like gobbledeeguck, my sewing reference books only seemed to address fly fronts with waistbands and so my first attempt was extremely slapdash. After a quicck search (online of course) I found a fantastic tutorial. I had to unpick the edgestitching and topstiching, as well the some of the seam and understitching but the results are much, much better than before. Still room for improvement on the inside, but there are not horrible threads sticking out.

See how nice the inside can be. My version had a wedge shaped out and the threads showing. Ick.
Look out for some more versions soon.

3 comments:

  1. BRAVO!!!
    That is ace... you're inspiring me to give the zipper thing a go!

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  2. Well done - they look gret - how did you go at the show?

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  3. Well done. It is always satisfying to achieve what you set out to do, especially if it is a new challenge! Thanks for the links...in case I ever want to try one (I've never done one either)

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