How to Attach a Zipper to a Zipper Backpack

Video Transcript

"Hi I'm Karen for Expert Village. Now we are going to attach our long heavy duty zipper to the top section. First you want to take one trapezoid piece and fold it in half and just mark the center. Right there, there is our center. Then we also want to mark a half inch seam allowance. So you want measure down a half inch like this and just draw a light line to mark that seam allowance. The zipper top will place so that the zipper is at the seam allowance. So any thickness that you have here you don't want to sew on, you want to put it right at the edge of the seam allowance and pin that in place. You want to keep it pretty close tightly close together and we would pin that right on the seam allowance. Now it would be at this point to use a zipper foot so you can sew as closely as possible to the top of that zipper. I'm going to open the zipper so I don't have too much bulk there. I'm going to switch my foot to a zipper foot and for my zipper foot I need to change the position of my needle. Okay each machine may be a little different, on my machine I need to change the position so that the needle will not hit the foot. I'm going to base that in place trying to sew as closely to the bulk of the zipper as possible on top of the zipper. Remove your pins and that will hold that in place and give us a line to fall on. Okay next you want to place your second trapezoids right side together over the zipper. I'm going to turn that over so I can see my stitching line of the zipper and that way we can follow that stitching line and we will not hit the thickness of the zipper. We will not hit the top of the zipper, we would just hit the cloth part of the zipper as we sew these two pieces together. We would put it back on the machine and sew with a half inch single allowance and follow the stitching line that we already have. Just finish that with a little bit of backward and then I'm going to sew some reinforcement stitching on the inside here. That will catch the top of the zipper and because this is going to be more of the pressure of the strap is going to come from. So you really go back and forth to reinforce and make a nice strong hold there. "