Wool Cycling Jersey: Adding a Zipper

Step 3 Baste and Sew

Basting is to use long, loose stitches to temporarily secure fabrics together. If you mess up it's easy to pull one thread and undo your work. I would suggest basting the zipper down to the sweater first to ensure it is aligned with the chalk mark.

Unzip the zipper past the 12 inch mark and then proceed to baste stitch down each side of the zipper to the 12 inch mark. Don't be tempted to run the stitching across the bottom and back up the other zipper side. We need for the zipper to freely move for a later step.

Fold the top extension tabs of tape over the collar and baste stitch them down as well using a horizontal stitch, perpendicular to the zipper. The reason for this is that if you were to stitch vertically, the feed dogs on your sewing machine will tend to pull the tape back out, leaving you with a sloppy finish (my second mistake.)

With the zipper basted in place and all the pins removed, switch to your zipper foot and stitch along the zipper coils. Run the stitches about 1.5-2mm away from the coils. This helps to prevent the wool later getting stuck in the zipper pull.