so in this lesson we're going to start working with the invisible zipper so I've used on purpose fabric and a zipper of two different colors but you would like to get a zipper that matches the color as closely as possible to your fabric to make sure that the installation is even more seamless but if you do it right you really could use a zipper of a different color than your fabric because you will not be seeing the zipper from the outside of the garment so I've just got scraps of a Ponte knit fabric here and my visible zipper this is a seven to nine inch zipper and my pins the first thing you want to do when installing a zipper is to baste together your two pieces of fabric and press open your seam allowances by basting you are sewing a straight stitch at the longest length of stitch that your sewing machine allows so let's go to our basting stitch at the scene where we will be installing the zipper and then we're going to press open our seam allowances flat make sure your machine is set on a straight stitch and knock the length up to as high as it'll go mine goes to a five point zero place your fabric on your 5/8 of an inch seam allowance and sew straight down you do not need the back stitch with the seam allowance facing you you'll take your iron set on the appropriate temperature and steam setting that is applicable for your fabric and you're going to press down on with your iron hold that down for a few seconds and press open your seam allowance is flat just like that now the true seam allowances are pressed flat you're going to flip your fabric over leaving one edge of your seam allowance loose so both ends of your fabric on this side and the only thing that you should have access to here is one side of your seam allowance grab your zipper this is the front of your zipper because you can't see the actual teeth this is the side of your zipper then we'll be facing outwards it won't be seen but it'll still be faced outwards unzip your zipper flip it over where you are looking at the teeth of your zipper and place that side of the zipper tape on top of the seam allowance that you just you have just pressed open grab some pins and you're going to pin down within the zipper tape your zipper before you start pinning I want you to line up your zipper tape make sure that the teeth are butted up against the center of this stitching line then just grab your pins place a few within the tape and secure the zipper tape to the fabric I recommend that you only do one side of your zipper tape as far as pinning it to your seam allowance get this size situated and then we'll go and work on the other side when you start to get more comfortable with your zip zippers you'll be able to pin both sides can be able to install your zipper more quickly but to get comfortable because it will take you some practice let's just do one so let's go to our sewing machine you probably have a standard presser foot installed on your machine I want you to pop that out because we're not going to use that your machine may come with a standard zipper foot that looks like this it looks very similar across the different brands of sewing machines if you bought your machine new then it came with this zipper foot if you did not you can buy the best standard zipper foot on Amazon or Ebay or go to your local sewing machine dealer this presser foot has two grooves to where you can snap it on to your shank and what's I it depends on what side of your zipper that you're going to be sewing down I always start on the left side and if you find that you've snapped it onto the wrong side then just switch it no big deal what we're going to do now is we're going to baste the zipper in place we're just going to do a long straight stitch to make sure that our zipper won't be flip-flopping around while we sew it down this presser foot part here is used to guide the zipper your needle placement will need to change because your needle cannot sew in the teeth because if you do then your zipper won't zip so I'm just lowering my presser foot and I'm going to adjust my needle position on my machine you can see my needle slide in there and I'm just going to place my needle right in the middle or so more close to as long as it's within the zipper tape because again we're just basting down the zipper we're not actually doing the permanent stitching so I'm just going to sew and you want to keep your zipper teeth as close to the middle as you can without overlapping what I like to do is just place my finger over it and keep it in place and you're going to sew until you can't sew anymore don't try to keep sewing just when it gets to the end when your presser foot butts up against your zipper pull then stop sewing now we've got our zipper tape secured in place with a basting stitch grab your scissors and cut off the long strands because like I said zippers hate thread so just make it a habit to cut off that thread to make sure it doesn't get caught up anywhere it's not supposed to get caught up now we're going to do the real stitching that's going to secure the best position for this zipper we're really going to focus on needle placement here and the edge of this presser foot when you look at your zipper you will see and pull apart you will see that you can actually roll the zipper teeth to the side just a little bit you want your needle to sink into that crease just under your zipper teeth but you can only see that crease if you move your zipper tooth over zipper teeth over so just roll it with your finger very gently and that's your goal you may not always get that close with that to your goal so I like to get a good grip on just the top inch or so of my zipper teeth place my presser foot directly the edge of that presser foot directly on that crease because it's going to this presser foot job is to keep your zipper teeth out of the way it doesn't always do that so you're going to watch it wide while you sew but it's going to butt up against these teeth keep it out of the way and its job is to make room for this needle to sink down where it needs to go so right now my needle position is not over enough it's too far this way if you find that your needle position is not getting close enough to this what's going to happen is when you flip over this garment and you're you're ready to close up your garment you're going to be able to see that zipper and it's not going to be cute okay so let's adjust our needle position and you can always test your needle position by just lowering your needle into your zipper and see where it hits okay so I like that I'm going to leave that there I'm going to back stitch and you see I never let go of my zipper teeth this is kind of a bit of a troublesome task to try to pull these zipper teeth back especially if you're not that familiar with it so if you get a good grip on the zipper teeth try to keep that grip so I've got a really good grip here and it's especially easier for people with fingernails so I'm sewing and I'm looking at the crease I want to make sure that the edge of this presser foot stays up against or is pospos as possible to that crease so I saw a little bit a scoop down I roll my teeth now you can just sew straight like this but it's not going to get you as close as you can get and again the goal is to make sure that this zipper is it as invisible as possible on the right side of the garment so I want you to take your time work on rolling back those teeth until you see that crease and making sure that you get your needle position correct so that you're able to get the best look so again you're going to sew until you can't sew anymore and in this case you're going to sew until you can't pull over your zipper teeth anymore back stitch pull everything out and snip your threads at this time I want you to go through and just kind of look you can peel back the zipper tape and see how what you've done in matter of fact an even better way is just to leave your zipper teeth alone if you cannot see if you're looking straight at your zipper and you cannot see the stitching that you just made then you're in a good position because that means it's up under your zipper teeth and that's where it should be if you see stitching kind of wavering out and around then it's not going to be as clean as you need it to be if you see stitching caught up in your zipper teeth then you'll need to take your seam ripper picking a loose and just resew that particular area because your zipper will not close when you go to pull your zipper closed it will not close and that's another tape if you don't if you're a really long zipper and you know it's dark thread dark colors in for dark fabric just pull your zipper closed and if it doesn't close then you'll see where it won't close just pick the thread loose and I'll redo it so we've got one side of our zipper sewn down now I'm ready to do the other side of my zipper I've already done my basting stitch just as we did on the other side I've switched my presser foot to the right side of the groove and now I'm ready to roll back my zipper teeth position that presser foot where it needs to go I'm going to drop it down and I'm going to hold on to my presser tooth will have a pretty good grip on it and I'm going to adjust my needle position to hit right into that crease just like we did the last time and then I'm going to sew very carefully couple stitches making sure I like the placement I do and you're just rolling the teeth back you I'm sewing down as far as I can go back stitch and cutting my threads so now we just need to release the basting stitch that we did when we sew together our two pieces of fabric take your seam ripper find that basting stitch and just pick it loose so now that that's picked loose go ahead and open everything up make sure you've got all these straggling thread out of the way don't want that to get caught up mention that several times because it's super important so now that we've picked our thread loose and everything just kind of eyeball it and look at it to make sure it's looking good this one is looking good I'm very happy with this we're not finished yet but before we move on to the next step let's just zip it up really quickly to make sure that is this this tells you that you don't have any thread caught in your zipper team and I like to just kind of zip and unzip it a couple of times just to make sure that it's good and I won't have any problem getting in or out of this garment so now we're going to work on this bottom piece here to close this up in reality you'll have a garment that is much longer that'll be open here but this is enough for us to work with to close this up so closing up the bottom of the zipper I'm going to close my zipper and we're going to work on the bottom this open flap here at the bottom so moving both of your seam allowances to the right side our goal here our goal here is to stitch as close to this line as we can while maintaining our seam allowance but also not sewing through our zipper so I can feel here that this is where my zipper stops so I can feel here that this is where my zipper starts and I'm working with a 5/8 inch seam allowance so about an inch and a half or so from the base of my zipper is where I'm going to start sewing placing my presser foot down and sink it in my needle I've got it pretty close to where it needs to go so I'm just going to back stitch and sew on down while keeping with my seam allowance and you can move this zipper bottom of this zipper tape out of the way to make things more accessible for you and that's all there is to closing up the bottom of your zipper and for your final product you are left with this nice clean functional invisible zipper you do not see this brown zipper head on the right side of this blue garment that's how your invisible zipper should look again if you found yourself wavering when you're sewing down your zipper tape to your seam allowance then that will cause you to be able to see Brown here also if you sew with in your zipper teeth you will not even be able to open your zipper tape would get caught so that's why I always suggest that as you're going open and close your zipper to make sure that you have good clearance and then the bottom finishing of the rest of your garment should be just as clean do you see here at the top where I said it's very important to make sure that you get your zipper as even as possible because if you pinned it crooked then what would happen is that your your garment would look like this at the top and if you have a band of binding or a neckline or a waistband or something too so that's going to look terrible and that's not exactly how it's going to look so when you pin make sure that you're pinning exactly how you need that zipper to go and you will get a nice clean finish like this