How to Sew the Bottom of a Zipper Backpack: Part 2

Video Transcript

"Hi I'm Karen for Expert Village. We are using a half inch seam allowance. Now we would start again, I started right on top of the stitching that I have already did. I have reinforced a little bit to knot it and now we would go around. You want to pull the pins out before you get to them because if you run over a pin you could possibly hit it with the needle and break your needle. As you get to the corners it is going to be a little bulky and you want to just flatten this as much as you can. Give it a little reinforcement there, put the needle down into the fabric and take the bulk and just move it away. The corners are going to the bulkiness spot and you just try to keep the bulk out of the way of the needle. Move the pins out as you go and work your way around going very slow. Don't be in a rush because when you are in a rush with this kind of sewing you end up with broken needles and that makes it take even longer. So go nice and slow and if feel that the fabric is too thick for the machine you can always stop and rotate the needle up and down and sew stitch by stitch with your hand on the fly wheel. I placed the needle down, I'm moving the bulk of the fabric out of the way moving that fold. Then you put the foot down and continue. With this foot I can get close to the teeth so I'm just going to back up a little to knot it. To give it a little reinforcement and cut my threads and I'm going to switch to the zipper foot so I could get very close to those teeth. You want to be careful when you switch the zipper foot, you may have to change the position on your needle. If you don't change the position on the needle you could very possibly hit the foot. Let's see I want it on this side to be as close to the teeth as possible. We would just back and forth a little bit to give it and make it nice and strong by the zipper. The two zippers would take a certain amount of the weight of the bag. Now I'm not going to do it here but it is probably a good idea since this is a bag that is going to carry a lot of things. You want to go around again. You can go around and just inside of the stitches that we just made and go all the way around again for extra strength. "