All You Need To Know About Replacing Zippers

1. April Jackson Introduction: Are you looking for a career opportunity? 2. Lesson 1- Measuring length and shortening Zipper: We're going to prepare our zipper to be put into a jacket. I always purchase my zippers and a longer format this way it can be shortened regardless of the size. Two markers, zipper. We wanted to compare zipper to the one that is in the coat that's being replaced before we start taking any of it out. The reason we do this is when we start taking out the old zipper, we're gonna be pulling on it. And depending on the material itself, like I'm going to show you with this net, it may actually stretch. So in order for us to get a true comparison as to how long to make our zipper. We want to do it before we take out the old one. I'm just going to line the zipper up to the old because zipper run it along all the way up to wherever they're stopper is placed. And I'm going to put a mark on my zipper. So I know that's where I'm going to be removing teeth and placing my new stopper. I also want to show you that technique quickly with a new item. Just because this is one of the reasons why we want to make sure we compare our zippers before we take it out. This material is very flexible. If I were to take that out right away. This is all going to be stretching. If I align my zipper up to the stretched material, the zipper is going to be way too long as well as you won't get the placement in as easily as if you were to compare it before we took it out, Take her zipper, line it up along the newspaper, and put a chalk mark where the stoppers the new stoppers will be placed. And now the zipper will be ready for us to shorten. We're going to pull the zipper, pull down. I'm going to start at my chalk mark. And with some needle nose pliers, I'm going to start pulling out zipper teeth. Make sure you're going in the right direction, going away from going away from your where this is the new zipper I want to take out above where my new zipper will be placed. The teeth do come out fairly easily. Many pieces of plastic still remain on the zipper. Just use your fingernail to take them off. Right? Now I'm going to take one of my zipper stoppers for the gray, I'm just going to use a silver I said onto the very top. Give it a pinch. Makes sure it's in place. It's very important that it doesn't move. So I'm going to use the backend of the pliers and give it a good Squeeze. We wanna make sure that that doesn't move. Though we already have a mark. I always do up my zipper. And the very first tooth that's above the slider on the other side. I'm going to pull that out. And now I can continue pulling out a few more teeth. On the other side. One more, grab another zipper stopper. But then at the top, you have it a pinch and a good Squeeze. Now we need to do is trim the excess super waste. And that's super is ready to be put into the new, the new garment. 3. Lesson 2 : How to replace zipper pull: Sometimes your client will bring in a garment to you and complain that the zipper is broken. But what may be broken on the zipper is the slider itself. And I'm going to teach you how to determine that. How the slider works is somehow, I always tell my clients somehow it within the slider, magic happens that causes everything to fold into place. I don't know how it happens, but that's how it goes. If that slider becomes stretched over time, are bent, it's not causing the teeth to correctly clip into place. And that's when you'll hear someone complaining that I do at my zipper, but then it undoes or I pull it up and it doesn't go together. That's generally a slider problem. And it's much easier to replace the slider as long as all the teeth on the zipper are intact. And there's no defects in that. We can replace the slider. And probably nine times out of ten, that will fix the problem. And the slider will last for another couple of years and they'll get some more. Where out of that, that Garmin. Let's at this point take a look at some of the elements we'll be working with. This is our jacket will be working with, and this is the slider that will be replacing. But before I show you that, I wanted to show you the items will be needing. I have my wire cutters. I use that at the top. Sometimes my plastic stopper at the top is actually to too large just to pull out. So we'll snap that off the wire colors. And of course we have the needle nose pliers. If we need that to help us pull anything on or off. These are some of our sliders that are available to us. I always have a pack of number five is the size of zipper and these are plastic, molded plastic. They only fit on the molded plastic zippers, which is this type of zipper. And I know this is a number five. You can also tell because of the back of each of the sliders has a tiny number that says five. So I know that's a number five, but I've learned to recognize that anyways, to complicate things even more among your sliders, there's two types of sliders. Let's take a close look at these. You'll notice this slider is more rounded and this slider is just, I call it more angular. The more rounded slider is considered old style. Older jackets will generally have this style on it. And the body of the slider is just a hair bigger and runs a little bit more smoothly on those zippers than if you were to try to put on a new style. And you can always look at the slide that you're replacing to see which one. If you're uncertain, try on an old style. If you try a new style in its kinda tightened, doesn't pull up and down. Try the old style and see which one slides up and down on your zipper teeth. The easiest. Okay, I'm going to set these aside for a second and take a look at the garment itself. Are garment here is purple. I do not have a purple that matches this perfectly, but I do have black. So I'm going to let the client know that I am going to replace that with the black and they were happy with that. This is the slide that the slider is on. So that's the only slide we have, the side we have to deal with. We're going to the top of the zipper. Remember I mentioned the stopper there. Stopper here is a big plastic piece, so I'm going to use my needle nose or actually my wire cutters to kinda cut that. But you wanna make sure you do not cut any of the zipper tape itself. Because once you cut the zipper tape and phrase too much and you can't repair that. Once you get the majority of that off, the other pieces that are left on will come out. Now, I'm hoping that when I take this off and put the other slider on, because this top area is skinny enough that I can do so without undoing the stitches. Once in a while you have to undo the stitches here to pull the complete top of the zipper tape out. Not all the time. We always try first without having to do that. Take our old slider, see how that comes right off. Now, we know this is garbage because it was broken. And let me see. It's hard to tell because that's a flip around. I'm going because it's an old outfit. I'm going to try the old-style on first. That all we have to do is lift that onto the top there. Before we do anything else, let's do up or zipper and see how that's working. That's good. I kinda give the bottom of wiggle. Let's undo it and do it again just to make sure it wasn't a fluke. Make sure it's in there. Well, at this point we have to replace, put something up there, otherwise, all our other zippers will fly off. So let me grab a black stopper for us. I'm just going to use a simple black stopper, that number five. And put that at the top of the zipper just because I have a black pole through to slip that on there. And we just want to make sure that's on securely. Make sure it's a really good pinch. Otherwise it's going to slip. A little thing you can do, which I would probably recommend. I don't like having one black stopper in one purple stopper. So at that point, I would make the executive decision to replace that one with a black one to it just looks more like it's meant to be the stoppers are like fractions of a penny, so it's better just to do a good quality job. That went on. There you go. I'm good. Pinch movies out of the way there. And now you can see that zipper has been replaced. The poll, and it's got some more aware. Just keeping in mind that we were really lucky in that we didn't have to undo any stitching. Because when the zipper is put in, this material is flipped back. If that is interfering in any way and you're fighting to get your stopper. The pullback on. Take a couple of minutes, released the stitching, pull it out so you can slip the slider rate down from the top, talk it back in, and just resell it. It's worth doing that than trying to fight to get a zipper pull on. Other than that, we're done. We've fixed the zipper with just a simple pole. 4. Lesson 3: Jean Zipper Replacement: The next thing we're going to learn is we're going to replace a gene zipper. Our main objective when doing a gene zippers, we do not want to have to touch the decorative top stitching. It is virtually impossible to get that put back in the same, same pattern so that it works into all the same where Marx, the technique we're going to learn today, we will not have to touch that decorative top stitching. Our main goal will be making sure that the threading that we use will match the gene itself. Here we have a medium to dark blue when we use a small enough stitch as well as match the color, the threading, how we're going to do the technique will not show. I have other people try this technique and they did not use the threading properly or they didn't have a small enough stitch and they did not get the results that they need. And if you do the technique properly, then it will be a perfect gene all the time. I always purchase my jeans zippers or any of my zippers and a longer format. This here is a size nine inches. So this way we can just shorten it as we need. So let's get started. We're going to start taking notes, the broken gene separate. The first thing we're going to want to do is we're going to want to be taking out the two areas of bar attacking that are generally on genes. So take your razor blade to the bar tacking. We've got that one on and behind. Now I want us to look at the gene stitching itself. We can see that the zipper is stitched in two rows of stitching here, and this is the decorative top stitching that is on the outside. It's this decorative top stitching that we want to be sure we do not touch. So I'm going to cut through the gene zipper itself. The top of the first row of top stitching and just close to the second row. The reason I'm doing that is just that little bit of clipping will cause your zipper to come out. But keeping that top stitching intact. Now we can take out the rest of the zipper and it will not touch our decorative top stitching blade underneath the waist band where the zipper isn't. A little bit as the stitching that is holding gene in. What I always like to see if it'll pull out. If it does, that's always better. Continued taking out this zipper. Now this side is already out and our decade of top stitching is still all in place. Clean out some of these threads always good to clean while you're going along. Take up the other side of the zipper, run your blade underneath the waist band. When you have a sharp blade, you're less apt to make a mistake and cut something. You don't want to cut. Your zipper is out. Now we're just going to finish cleaning up some of these spreads. And now you're ready to put the new gene zipper n. That's it. Will put the new genes of Perrin. To get started. We're going to line up our zipper. Face down to your gene on the inside. The actual stopper, we want to go just below the decorative top stitching. Make sure your zipper when it's flattened, is right along the edge of your gene. I'm going to put a couple of pins in to hold this into place. Home eyes up or down. This is the side we will be sewing in first. I'm going to trim this upper. Just underneath the waist band. And the next thing we're going do is we really need a small step. So I'm actually going to turn my stitch length to one on this particular machine that will be small enough. First thing we're going to do is based the waist band down. You don't have to do front and back to secure this because the stitches small enough just when you're going over top of your zipper. Turn your hand wheel so you don't hit your zipper teeth. To get over top. This helps to pull the zipper in place for your next step, but it also gives you a good idea. On the good side, c, We cannot see that stitching anywhere that we just did. That's a good test stitch. Now, we're going to place the Sippar underneath. With my foot running along the zipper teeth. We're gonna do two rows of stitching to hold the side of the zipper in place. Leave the needle in, move your zipper. Slider out of place. Continue sewing all the way down. Just past your decorative top stitching. I'll lift up the work, spin it around. And now I'm going to do my second row of stitching to secure it along the edge of the zipper, all the way to the top, front and back to secure that similar threads. This is where we see the magic, where we can't see our top stitching that has gone right through. Trim up these threads. That side of the zipper is actually all in place. Already. After this step, this is the only time we will be needing to change our top stitching thread. We're actually going to put the same color that is in for your genes top stitching. We only need to change the top threads. So let's pull that through. And we're gonna change our helps switching back to a three or four, whichever is going to match up the original top stitching in your gene. I'm gonna go with 3.5. I'm going to clean up the decorative top stitching, the top of the first slide we had done little bit of front and back. Just be careful going over top of the zipper that is underneath. And see how nice that looks already on our good side. Now we're going to start to put in the second side of the zipper. We have our chalk mark that up into the waist band up to the checkmark layer work. Once your zipper right onto your facing, tuck the other overlay into place. Once you've got your zipper tucked underneath, even with your waist band where your mark is, we're going to replace the top stitching. Use the hand wheel to go over top of the zipper teeth so it doesn't break. We are going to now put our top stitching down zipper. I want make sure your zipper is lined up with your facing nice and straight. Lie this overlay. So it's about a quarter of an inch from your zipper teeth. All right. Sure. Things lined up into place. Let's replace this top stitching. All the way down just a little bit past the zipper. Spin your work around. Now we're going to replace our bar tacking in any other top stitching that was removed. Here. I see we just have Navy which will switch to for now, we'll keep in our gold and replace the two top bar tacks that we took out in the very beginning. But our stitch two to one, I usually go back and forth a couple times. Same with this tacking that was over on the stitching. Replacing the bar tapping, clipping all our threads. Always clip as you go along way. I'm going to change our thread back to the Navy. And we're going to replace the top stitching just underneath the zipper. And there you have a new brand new genes zipper. 5. Lessson 4: Men dress zipper: Our client has requested that we replace the zipper in their dress pants. This is actually a men's dress pants. So we're going to show you a man's dress pant, a women's dress pant and man's casual pant, ladies casual. The reason is because the zipper applications are done very differently. So this way we're going to run over some of the techniques. You'll notice some will overlap, but there are some details in a man's dress pant how it's constructed that is completely different than a lady's. So we just want to make sure we cover all those little nuances. So let's go to the pant and the first thing we're going to do, of course, is removed the zipper. So make sure you have your sharp blade and let's begin with any zipper. There's always going to be some tacking at the base of the zipper as well as on the inside holding the flap together, we always want to remove are tacking first. Going to always be careful removing tacking because it's always a security stitch. It's always done like this obviously is bar attacking, so it's very concentrated and it just takes a little bit of patients to get that out. So you can see how now the flap at the back, we have removed that. And let's see what else we got. There's also some tacking on the inside at the base of the zipper. So we're going to undo that a little bit. There we go. At this point, now what I wanna do is we're going to remove the zipper first along the, what's considered the front of the fabric. The front are good side. We're going to run our blade along on the inside under the waist band just to loosen these stitches. So now it has revealed the incident, the bottom at the top of the zipper on a dress pants, the decorative top stitching, we definitely need to remove that. Next, we go to the inside of the pant and just start anywhere. Now I want to show a notice something to you. We've lifted up that top stitching. A ghrelin goes up to the waist band, but this is already, it's continuously stitch down. We want you to lift this up. I'll show you what I mean once I get it opened up. Because we won't be able to get the work done on replacing the zipper if we don't undo this other stitching here, I actually took too much out there but see how now that's lifted up and that was actually sewn to the waist band inside facing. But we need to open that up that little bit in order for us to get in to do the work properly, we'll just replace anything that's come out, continue removing the front top stitching. And now the only thing we have to do on this slide is under the stitching that is holding the zipper to this side of the pant. We can always try the tear method. And we see that works because there's only one row of stitching holding that together. I'm just trying to figure out there's extra stitching here so that's securing that. So I'm just going to make sure we get that out without cutting any material there. Now we're going to turn them. Now the next thing we wanna do is remove the other side. Same thing. Slip it underneath the waist band. Just enough to get the zipper shown and released. There we go. And run it along. Actually, I want to go underneath because I don't want to cut any of the good material just to loosen some threads, reading my blade along. And you'll see what this is. This is going to undo here. Once we've got enough open up, we may be able to open that up quick way. Right here. I want to show you on the front, there is another piece of tacking. So that's why it's a little slower. At this point. We just want to be careful and undo that tacking also that we'll get the rest of our zipper wrote. There are zippers out. You can see that with a men's construction, we have are facing. It's usually joined to another piece of material that the base of the crotch. We're just going to leave that joined together there. We're just going to make sure we clean up all our threads. And then we're gonna go to the machine and put in our new zipper. We're at the sewing machine. And just so you know, I am using a little bit darker of a zipper than normally would go into the pan so that you can see where it's being placed better. And I have also done the same with my chosen a little bit darker over threads. So it'll be easier for you to see where my stitching is actually going. At this point, the first thing I want to do is correct the two areas that came out more than I would like. I remember when I was taken out the zipper, this teaching at the top pulled out. So when I have done this, turned around. So you can see this is actually sewn on the inside by flipping up the waist band. So I'm going to get that flipped up and I wanna get that sewn back into place first. Put that into the machine. When we flip that right side out. You can see that that now has been repaired. At the very bottom. You noticed when I was taking out the very bottom of the zipper, I said there's a bit of tacking there. The stitching because attacking has been removed, the stitching is kind of loosening up and opening up. So we're going to go inside and dri so that securely to before we put the actual zipper. If we don't do that, it's going to open up at that area. It's going to be too loose as well as you can see where they're tacking, was that the materials a little bit afraid. We're going to take that in just a bit, just so that it's nice, clean finish. So find where that seam is, the very base of the zipper. You can see that stitching right there. We're just going to continue that up. It's about half an inch from where it is now. We're going to use a small stitch. Anytime we want something to be secure, we always use a bit smaller of a stitch. I'm lining up this fold with the adjoining fold. Just go up a little down and makes sure that that little frayed area isn't showing. There we go, clean up my threads. And you can see now how that's not opening up. Before we put our zipper in, we need to change the zipper foot. Right now we have our all-purpose foot, which is about is about a quarter of an inch. We want to replace it with what I call my skinny foot. This is going to allow us to get closer to the zipper. We don't necessarily need an actual zipper foot, which is only one-sided. We just need the skinny zipper foot. So let's put that one on before we do our application. There we go. Now we're ready to actually put the zipper in. We always start on what I call the good side. The side where our good top stitching is. You'll notice also our zipper is longer. That's not a problem because of course we're going to shorten it from the top and we don't really have to shorten and we're just going to tuck it inside the waist band. We want to place our zipper face down onto the back of the goods side. Are key point here. We can see where the top stitching was placed. We want to make sure that the base of the zipper does not go through the top stitching. We want it to be just above that. So lay the zipper face down. Make sure we're clearing that top stitching by maybe just half an inch. See that's where my stitching is here. Lay the zipper so that the edge of the tape is running along the center of the pant length that, and I'm actually just going to put a couple of pins in to secure that. I'm going to slide my zipper down. Oh, actually. So now I'm going to open up the facing. Because we were actually want to, this is the slide. We're actually going to sell a couple of pins in because I don't want it going through to the front of the parent. And I'm actually going to take this pin out and put this in here. Now that we have that lined up where we want, we can take out those pins that we use for basting. Pull the zipper down. And this is where the waist band starts. We're gonna cut about half inch above that. Get rid of that part of the zipper. That gives us just enough to tuck in there. And that's how we want that to go. I'm actually going to put a pin in there to hold that for me. At this point now we're actually going to put our two rows of stitching that are going to hold the zipper tape to the facing. Start at the bottom. I'm using about 2.5 for my stitch, making sure that the facing is opened readout. I'm going to stitch right near the edge of the zipper tape. And I'm opening out this area. So it's nice and flat. I can take that out now. When I get to the top, I want to position my needle. So it's rate in my waist band at that point. Because I'm going to spin this around. Because now I'm going to tack the zipper. I'm going to take this out normally I wouldn't, but I want to show you what I had done. I've sewn all the way up the one side, open that out and I've attached now the zipper to the waist band through the facing, but it has not gone through to the good side. That's why I want to show you one open that out. Now I'm going to put my second row of stitching along the zipper, running my foot closer to the zipper teeth. Most pants diapers will always have two rows of stitching. There's a couple of reasons for that, of course, for security. But I will show you once I get this zone, the zipper will actually lie flat. Or when we have two rows of stitching, if we were just to have our one row here, it's going to lift up a bit more. It just gives it a bit more stability. When we have our two rows. We now have our two rows. In this side of the zipper. Let's take a look and see what it looks like at this point. Do upper zipper. You can see that it's in that side. Now what we have to do is we're going to replace this decorative top stitching. Before we do that, I want us to take note of the other side of the zipper That's not sown. And yet we need to make sure that that Peace does not get caught, enter decorative top stitching. So at this point we're going to bend that up. Put a pin in there. Just like that. That will keep that out of the way. And another important part is we need to make sure that this material is lying smooth. Because if we start, let's say we started here and this was all bunched up. When we do our top stitching, we're gonna get a pucker. So we want to smooth this all out. So it's nice and smooth. If you want, you can put a pin in. And we're going to start right down here and we're going to replace that top stitching. This is one reason I don't normally press this one's the zipper zone because I want to be able to see where that original line was. Just take your time. You want a nice smooth stitch because this is the very front of the pants. We've reversed, it's secure it there. And let's take a look at what this looks like. We have the first half then. See how nice that looks. Let's begin prepping for the next side. First thing we wanna do is we want to make sure that when the zipper is done up the waist bands then up, that everything's going to line up properly. So at this point I'm going to put a chalk mark on the other side of my zipper. So it's perfectly lined up where it's going to get inserted into the waist band. I know I can cut about half inch above that. Get rid of the extra piece. Flares up or down. I want to show you something. You'll notice that the back of the pant is all in white. Even if we were doing our work in this beige color. You can put white in the background if you want. The reason I don't is because unless you have your attention is perfectly set, sometimes the white will show through the white thread. So I just prefer to do all my sewing with the color of the original stitching and the original, the pant itself, whatever is going to be showing on the top. If back here, you'll see it because we have the darker brown. If this is a lighter brown on this side, it's long as it's nice and neat. It's on the inside is not going to make a difference. That not white. So I just wanted to point that out, but originally they may have sown with the white. I think they have because we can see some other thread remaining here, but I'm not going to put white in. At this point. Let's take my zipper tape the other side. I'm going to stick it up into position so that it lines up with my waist band. I'm going to slip it under. So there's only about a quarter of an inch showing. Now another thing that I'm doing here is I'm just going to secure this by putting a fine row of top stitching here to here. And actually I'm going to bring it straight across what looks like It's meant to be. The original work was all done with insight and we'd have to take out a lot more to replace it exactly as they had. As long as this is nice and neat. When our zippers together, no one's going to see that little bit of top stitching that we're doing. I'm going to show you what I mean. We've got a smaller stitch till we're working on it with a two now, clean up any threads from the old work. Going to start right here, a little bit of front and back to secure. Make sure my zipper is in the right place. You can see my chalk mark. It's moved a little. There we go. So my chalk mark now is rate lined up with where the waist band is starting. Tuck that in just a little bit. And I'm going to do a row of top stitching read across. Because it's going right across. It looks more like it's meant to be then if we were just to stop it here, lashes my theory there. And you can see how that's gone right through. And it secured our zipper at the top. Now we're going to replace the top stitching on this side. Always leave your needle and when you're positioning the fabric, now we're going to lay the zipper down. This material on top. This is actually securing it to it and the top stitching all in one step. We're going to get as close to this scene as we can. Let's take a look and see what that looks like on the opposite side. Alright. Clipper threads. There. We can see what it looks like on the good side here. Now that's lined up now in place. And on the inside. This is what we have, nice and neat all the way down. At this point, we just have to replace the attacking that was in here. Because we've already secured at the very base of the zipper. I'm not going to put an extra tacking on here. It's already done from inside. That's all nice and secure in there. It's not gonna go anywhere. I'm not going to put an extra row of tacking on here, but we do want to put our tacking on the inside. Let me show you to hold this flap down into place. So I do that by doing that my zipper little bit. Make sure this is just lying nice and smooth. And these two layers are going to get tacked together. I will show you where that goes. On the inside. Just about half an inch. Layers tacked together. And at that point our zipper is complete. 6. Lesson 5: Basic Pant Zipper: Client has requested to have a new zipper put in this pant. This is a man's pant, but it is going to be standard even if it was a women's, The only difference is is the top stitching, the flap will be on the opposite side. Sometimes. This is a standard pant application, not a dress pant for a man's just any basic casual pan. I want to walk you through the steps. The first thing we need to do is remove the zipper. And the first thing we always do is we're going to remove some of this tacking. There'll be some tacking as the base here, and there's always tacking, usually along the seam here that is holding the facing, the protective flap together. So we're going to start with the razor blade and remove tacking. That's open there. Now, attacking at the base of the top stitching. We've got that out now. The next step we're going to do is I always remove the the side that has the front that has all the top stitching. I always like to do that first. So we're gonna run our razor blade right underneath the waist band. And because we are taking off this top stitching, you might remember with our gene zipper that we didn't remove that top stitching. We did the application so we could leave that in. We are going to be lifting up the whole flap on the inside. So we do need to lift this up enough that we can at the waist band that we can release This facing. Next we're going to run the razor blade underneath or zipper. Once again, we should be able to pull that out. And if we get stuck a little, just reuse your blade. If it's a spine or dress pants, you might want to just blade that out, but now we technically have the zipper removed from that side. Now we need to lift up the top stitching that is holding this flap down. Run your blade between a few of the stitches. Just carefully remove that. And there we go. Now we have that flap and its top stitching is all removed. Now let's go to the other side. Start the same run our razor blade right underneath the waist span, just enough to release the zipper. And then we're going to run the razor blade along this edge. A lot of times that will come up in one step. Sometimes the zipper will be based at separately to that facing, then you just need to lift that up also. But this is all done in one step. And now you're old zippers out. And now all we have left to do is clean up any loose threads. And then we'll be ready to go to the machine to put the new zipper in. Just take note also sometimes this protective flap, it actually goes behind the zipper so that you don't catch yourself or with your zipper. Sometimes it, the searching, it will be joined rate to the zipper. So when you remove the zipper, this surging will come out. If that happens, just go to your search, research that, and then there'll be nice and clean and ready for the new zipper to go in. So now let's head to the machine. We're at the sewing machine. I'm actually going to use a different color zipper so that you can see where the placement is going, as well as our thread is a little lighter than the original top stitching. This way you can see a little bit clearer where I'm gonna be putting the top stitching. The first step is to put the zipper on, which would be considered the very front of the patient. The one that has the the flap with our good top stitching. We're going to put that side on first. We did the same with our gene. It went on this side but we just didn't have any other top stitching to replace. For casual pant, we do remove that. So the first thing we're gonna do is open up our pant. And we want to lie our zipper face down on the flap, the front facing. The bottom of the zipper can't go any lower than the top stitching itself. I'm talking about the stopper because that will prevent us from putting the zipper in properly as well as replacing this top stitching. If any part of our zipper goes down below that, it has to be the stopper has to be just above your first row of top stitching. If this particular pan had two rows of top stitching, as long as you're very first one, it is not hitting your stopper. With the zipper. Face down on your pant. Make sure your stopper is away from there. Maybe a boat that's just about a quarter of an inch. I'm going to put a couple of pins to hold this in place. And it's like we did with our gene. The edge of the zipper has to be right along the very front edge of the pant. Where with our genes we sold through all the layers. We want to so our zipper this time only to this flap. So with that in place, I'm now going to put a couple of pins on this side. And the reason I'm doing that is I'm going to need to be able to release this side, um, when we get near the zipper pull, we need to undo that. So that's why this is going to hold my zipper into place. Now I'm just going to take these two pins out. So now that I can get that so named because it's actually this is the side we're going to attach to the facing. Now let's put it under the machine. The facing is now opened out. Our zipper is still running along the front edge. I'm going to run my zipper foot or the foot along the teeth of my zipper. This way I get one row of stitching in the middle of the tape. And my second row of stitching is actually going to be on this very edge. Use a medium stitch. Let's get that into place. I do use pins once in a while. I just don't want you using lots and lots of pins so that you're spending a lot of time pinning and not sewing. When things like this can just be held into place. Making sure that it's lined up. Go all the way to the top. We have one row of stitching. And now I'm going to put a second row of stitching rate along the ad. So we always have to clean up our threads. Undo our zipper. Because as we can see, the zipper is always a little longer than what we need. I'm going to trim off any excess. And now this gets all tucked inside like we did with our other zipper genes. It's like the inside. And now we're going to secure our top stitching by replacing the original top stitching that we took out to remove the zipper. Remember anytime we go over top of a metal zipper, always just turn the hand wheel. That way we make sure our needle doesn't hit any metal teeth. We've blended our top stitching with theirs. And you can see on this side now that everything is secure in there. The next step is replacing the decorative top stitching that was on the front of the pant. And I don't normally press my pants after I take a zipper because I want to be able to clearly see the line where the original stitching was. If for any reason you can't see that, you're always going to do a nice chalk line, but because we can clearly see, I'm just going to put that top stitching back. What you need to make sure when we put that top stitching back, if our zipper is laying nice and flat like this, this side of the zipper has to freely go into your other side of the patient. So we need to make sure that this flap does not get caught in our top stitching. So we're going to bend this up so it's out of the way and put a little pin in there to hold that. We can see now that when we put this top stitching, it's going to miss that flap. Another tip. When putting back this top stitching, we want to make sure all the material is lying nice and smooth. Sometimes I've put in my top stitching started here. But if the facing wasn't lying nice and flat, what you may end up is the material beginning to bunch up. And then you get a bit of a bubble. That's because it was not laying nice and smooth in the first place. So I always like to make sure it's smooth. Another trick to prevent that is if you want to start from the top and solar your way down, I always like going from left to right. It makes it a little easier for me. But you can always start from the top end. So down, if you are starting from the bottom and going up, you just need to make sure that you're taught material is nice and flush and straight against your flap. We're going to do a little security stitch here just because we're starting a row. And we want to just make sure that our top stitching goes on exactly into where their original stitching. And just as we get to the waist band, just a little bit of a security stitch. And our first side is technically in. We have the top stitching replaced and the waist band. Now we'll begin putting the zipper on the other side. Before we do that, we need to trim up our zipper as well. We want to make sure that this waist band is going to line up with the waist band on the other side when the zipper is data. So I'm going to put a little chalk mark rate where the waist band hits my zippers. And then I can trim any access probably about a half an inch above that. Released the zipper. And this is where I live. We're going to focus just a little bit when all is said and done. That's how the back is going to look. We have are facing or zippers going in, lay there. And then we have this piece that goes over top of the zipper for a nice clean front. Let's make sure it looks like that at the back already. Then we take our zipper. We want to make sure that the back is looking like it did originally. We have are facing down with our top facing. Slip our zipper in-between the two layers. And I'm keeping an eye on that. The mark that I just put on here is going to only go as high as the waist band. Just going to hold that in place. Slip it under the machine. I'm going to overlap some of their original top stitching. At this point, my zipper teeth is approximately, you can see about a quarter of an inch from the top facing going to sew straight across the whole that once again, I'm going over top of the metal t, So I just want to use the hand wheel so I don't bust the needle cleanup. So with that row of stitching rate, there are zipper on the second side is already being held in the place for us. We're going to put our work under the machine. So now our next step is we're putting the zipper on top of the facing. With your front-facing? I'm running my the edge of my foot along the teeth. Once I've got it started in the needles in its holding my work, continue to lay the zipper straight down the back facing. And let's lay this on top nice and neatly. I always leave your needle and when you're manipulating your work, that kind of helps to hold everything into place for you. Continue to straighten out your work. Because at this point we want to make sure that everything is lining up, that we're not getting this to high up or too far down when your zipper is closed, we want a nice flat application, so I'm making sure everything is lying into place and continue to sew straight down. At this point, I'm just going to leave my needle in, spin my workaround. Because now I'm just going to replace my top stitching along the very front that came up when we took this out. I'm making sure there's nothing caught underneath. At the bottom. They can share the waist bands not getting caught using the same size of stitching that was there. And then once we get to the base of our zipper top stitching, remember there was tacking earlier. We're gonna go to a smaller stitch and do a little bar tack. And if we remember also, there was a little bit of a bar tacking right here on the front that did go through all the layers. So I'm not going to cut that thread. I'm going to come right here and replace that. Are attacking is generally maybe three-eighths of an inch. Attacking went from there to there. Now we can take this out. We're going to clean up our threads, cut any loose threads on the front. Started at the top here. We went bar attacking any loose threads that we have at the base here that didn't get cleaned up earlier. Flip the work inside out. Clean up these threads. And our zipper is now complete and see how it's tucked in both sides. Nice and clean. And we have our top stitching replaced with no extra bubbles. And at the very base of our zipper, there's no puckers. It's laying, everything's laying nice and flat. With experience. You'll get to that point. If there happens to be a bit of a pucker or it's not laying properly, always just remove a little bit of it and put it back till we get this flawless application. Your client will be very happy.