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Sewing on a zipper can be simple when you use the right foot. Your foot number 4 is
your zipper foot. You'll notice that you should not stitch in the center needle position with
this foot. You need to be to the right or to the left depending on what side of the
foot the zipper is on. You can always move it based on what you need. But there's another
way of going about it. If we just regularly remembered how to set this up we would move
the needle position all the way to the right or all the way to the left, but I'm going
to put that back to the center.
Go ahead and touch home, arrow down, and across to your little picture of a dress form. That's
the creative consultant. Tell the machine what fabric you're working on. I'm just going
to do lightweight cotton, or we'll do a medium. Then arrow over to the picture of a zipper.
Touch OK. It's going to tell me I need stitch number 1, foot number 4, a pressure of 46.
That's normal. And a tension of 3 reduced. I can come up here and reduce my tension by
1 number. When I touch OK though, look what happens.
Needle position moved to the side. Foot number 4 shown on the screen, and the stitch length
is already made a little bit longer. That is really nice. Let's go ahead. We'll switch
out our foot. We see that it's on the left side which depending on what you're sewing
first that may or may not be exactly what you need, but it is. We'll just start off.
I love zippers that are extra long for what I'm working with. I'm just going to go ahead
and stitch this down on the edge. I'm just lining up the edge of my zipper to the edge
of my fabric.
You can do things in a couple different steps here. Usually what I'll do is stitch my zipper.
We'll take it to the iron and press it open. So get that nice and even. The next thing
I'm going to do is top stitch this down. When I lower down the presser foot, you're going
to notice that my needle is not on the correct side. We're going to move the needle position
all the way over to the far right. Then I'm going to go ahead. We'll take a stitch here.
Get that thread hooked underneath, back. There we go.
Then I'm going to just finger guide myself down for a top stitching along the edge here.
Zippers are one thing people sometimes shy away from. I don't know why because usually
the pattern tells you exactly how to put them in, and especially in bags these days, it's
so simple because you are working with longer zippers, big pieces, and it's just like that.
That's the first side. If I was going to go ahead and add the second side, put my fabric
down like this. Make it even. I don't want to sew from this side. I can't see my zipper.
Then what I can do is just flip it over, bring that needle position back to the far left
side, and find my edge here. Then repeat the same process. We'll just go ahead and stitch
down. My zipper is next to my foot. My needle is going to guide me down, or my foot's going
to guide me down. My needle is going to go right beside it. Then away we go. Super simple
to do a zipper, specially with the right foot. Don't forget about that creative consultant
right here in the home button down by the dress form.