 Welcome back to Sewing 101. Alright, so I was watching... What channel was I watching? I think it was Hauls for Crafts, and I'll link her channel in the description below, and I'm sorry if I seem kind of distracted more than normal, because I'm having a few conversations at the same time. Anyway, she has some interesting videos, and I think she might have a couple of channels and the Hauls for Crafts one is her one where she just does hauls, which I don't always watch, but it's interesting. Anyway, she was talking in a recent one of her videos about how she was looking for a purse for her daughter, but they both liked it, but it didn't have a zipper inside, and she didn't like that because she's been out before, like in New York City, and somebody tried to like get into her purse while she had it on, just out on the street. And, you know, good point. Anybody who lives in or been to a big city, you know, you were always worried about people, like reaching into your pocket and stuff like that, so I have this kind of ugly bag. It's not real super cute. It's not horrible, but this is just a simple canvas bag. I got it years ago at Ross Dress for Less, which is across the street from my house. It was on clearance. I think it was like $5. I just wanted something that was not super attractive, fairly sturdy that I could just throw like my keys and phone in when I'm out walking the neighborhood or from taking the train. I don't want to take my big regular handbag with me. I just want to grab a few things, so I take this one. So, but I did think after watching her video, it would be nice if it had a zipper, which it doesn't have. So, first thing we're going to do is clean it out because I haven't done that, and God knows how many cough drops or cough drop wrappers we're going to find in here because it's something that's in all my bags. It helps me keep my asthma in check as cough drops. So, I do have pepper spray in here, and I see a handful of cough drops. Let's see what else is in here. I don't even know. That might be it. That's it right now. It does have this. Oh, no, there's another cough drop. There's this cute side pocket that's usually where I put my iPod. And yes, I said iPod. I do actually have an iPod, and I use that for listening to music when I'm out walking. So, okay, so then the next thing we're going to do is we're going to mark the center of our bag. Match everything up and mark the center. I'm going to just stick some pins in there. I need my pin cushion. Or pin jar. I should say pin jar. Okay. So, and we're using the Fawth 1546 today instead of my little small genome because we're going to be working with a zipper to put in this bag. And you really need a proper zipper foot for that. And so this is going to be best done on a more expensive machine. That doesn't mean if you don't have a big machine that you can't make it work, because of course you can. So this doesn't have to be perfect, but I want to get it approximate. But I have this better machine, so we're going to use it. All right. And this bag is dirty. I'm going to have to wash it after I'm done. All right. So then I have a zipper. Now I accidentally picked up a separating zipper, which I didn't intend when I went to the store, but honestly I was distracted as per usual. And didn't even pay attention. It's been a while since I bought a zipper. You want the zipper to be quite a few inches longer than your bag. I would say like three to five inches longer on either end when you center it on the bag, which this is. The first thing I'm going to do is fold the zipper in half and I'm going to mark its center with some more pins. You could of course use some Taylor's chalk or am I reading glasses on? I really should. Taylor's chalk or a pencil or something to mark this. I'm just going to use pins. And I'll show you what I mean by a separating zipper. A separating zipper separates at the bottom when you unzip it all the way, like you would find on a jacket. So when you unzip it all the way, the two ends will come apart. For this project, it doesn't matter. You can just use a regular zipper. I have the separating zipper. Obviously we're going to use it. And I'm going to put these glasses on because I can't have trouble seeing what I'm doing. All right. Ooh, that's better. All right. So now I'm going to take my zipper and separate it. Since it separates, we're going to take advantage of that. And I'm going to take one end and I'm going to line the pins up. And can you see that I have the teeth? Like they're up against the edge of the bag here where this vinyl piece is. I'm going to have them be like an eighth of an inch away. Not all the way smack up against it, but close. And then we're going to pin it down. Okay. Then we're going to take the other end of the zipper and we're going to make sure we have the right ends together, which I almost didn't. I couldn't figure out why that didn't work right. So you're going to make sure you have the two ends that go back together at the same end before you pin or sew anything together, yeah? All right. Then take your two pins again and with the teeth facing up towards the flap, there's a stitching line here which tells me that's where the edge of the bag is. So I'm going to have the teeth. Again, I'm going to just eyeball it and have it be like about an eighth of an inch above. And then we're going to pin out. Ouch. And so then pin all the way around. Do yourself a favor and have all your pinheads going the same way. When you get to the strap, stop like a quarter of an inch shy of where the strap is. Don't sew all the way to the strap. When you hear my device is pinging, I forgot to turn things off. Oops. Somebody is messaging me again on Facebook. It's been happening all morning. Make sure that you... Now I'm going to be sewing through a number of layers of fabric, the vinyl trim, the zipper. So I want to make sure I have one of my denim needles on the sewing machine. It'll be easier to get through all the different layers if I do. And I also want to use a color of thread, either black or cream colored thread that matches the bag. So I think that's good enough. It doesn't have to be perfect, but I just want to be able to roughly hold it in place and not have it move around. I'm going to start at this end and sew down that way. And I'm going to start about a half an inch into the side of the bag. I'm going to switch to a zipper foot. This is a regular presser foot. A zipper foot basically is one-sided so you can get close to the zipper teeth. Okay, so this particular zipper foot looks like this so that I can get up close. The needle will be on one side or the other, and I can get up close to the zipper teeth. And I can change it around so I can do one side of the zipper and then do the other side. Question. So now I'm going to make sure that I'm not sewing through my flap, and I've pulled my flap out here. And I'm going to kind of curl it in on itself. I'm going to make sure my zipper's nice and flat. Flat, ouch. Blood on the project is a bad idea. Holy moly, that hurt. I should be sewing through the other side because that way I can see what I'm doing, which means this is on the wrong side. I'm going to... The strap doesn't come off, but it does unhook on one side, so I'm going to take the hook off. That's better. So I want to make sure too when I'm sewing this part on that I don't sew my... There's an outside back pocket that I don't sew it closed. So that's going to be important. And I'm going to do this side first because it's the harder side to do. So I'm probably going to sew up to the side seam and then go back and forth at the beginning and the end and then stop. Then I'm going to start again on the inside of the pocket. So that I can make sure to stitch it down the way I want, but at the same time not so the pocket closed. It's going to let me... Oh, see, broke a needle. That's why you want to use a thick needle. Because even with a thick needle, you might break it. All right, I'm going to get a new needle out and I'm probably going to change camera angle so you can see better what I'm doing. I think you can see better now anyway. So maybe it's a good thing the needle broke. And if you were doing this on this bag, I would recommend that you use probably black thread. I'm using white. I don't really care. It's like I said, it's my walk around the neighborhood bag. So it doesn't matter. I can always cover it up with black Sharpie. There's a trick for you. All right, so I'm going to do that again. So I'm going to start sewing. There we go. And I'm going to go back and forth and then back and forth and then out. And then I'm going to stop. I stuck myself again. Lift the needle up. And I'm not going to cut the threads, at least not right now. And I'm going to just slide the fabric around. There we go. And as I'm stitching, I'm going to take the pins out. Don't sew over your pins. I am keeping with my fingers, keeping I can feel the zipper teeth and I'm keeping it lined up so that they're beyond where the seam allowance or the seam is here where the flap is sewn to the bag body. And this doesn't have to hold any weight or anything or necessarily have lots of stress put on it. So if you use a little bit bigger stitch, it's probably going to be okay. This is just so people can't reach inside your bag. And I'm paranoid about stuff like that. I'm the kind of person that can't leave their stuff in the cubby hole at the gym because I don't want people touching my things. So I do wear an unattractive fanny pack. So make sure I go back and forth. Then I'm going to lift the presser foot up again. And I'm going to make sure everything's out flat, that I'm not sewing through the other side of the bag, that I'm not sewing through the strap or anything. And I'm going to come around here, going to sew this down just a little bit like it happens here. So we're going to lift all of that up and trim. Now we're going to trim all our threads inside and outside. That thread caught in the seam there. There we go. But I just got it out, so it's all good. Okay, so that side's done. Now we'll do the easier side. This other side's going to be way easier because I don't have the flap in the way. So I'm going to just take all of my bits and pieces, my strap and everything. I'm going to push them to the side. I'm going to make sure the other half of the zipper end is out of my way. I'm going to start again about a half an inch in or so from the edge. I'm going to actually switch my zipper foot so that it's basically sewing on the other side or holding, I should say, with the other side. I'm going to pull my pin out, holding my threads. So I'm going to try to see if I can zoom in for you all. All right, so the presser foot stays basically to one side, the zipper foot, presser foot, so that you can get, like I said, close to the teeth. I'm going to pull this pin out. Don't feel like you have to go fast. And this is best done probably with a cloth bag. If you have a leather bag, you're probably going to need to take it to a leather, like a shoe repair place. You could probably put a zipper in for you. Make sure you go back and forth at the beginning and the end. And that row of stitching is much straighter than the backside. The backside is really hard to get straight because there's so much going on in the back. But like I said, this is my walk-around bag, so I don't care. If you don't think you can get the stitching at all straight, like I said, use black thread, at least where you're sewing through the vinyl because it'll show up less. So now we have this. So if we take our zipper ends down here, and hopefully we've done it right because, you know, it wouldn't be the first time I did something wrong. Yes, we did. So now we have this, and it sews up nice, but you have these flaps. You need to have me zoom out because you can't see. So it closes up nice now, but you have these things. Sound like bunny ears. Not as super attractive. So we're going to take these little ends and we left that little space, right? So we're going to poke the zipper through on this end. It'll take a little finagling. There we go. Before we get too far, I'm going to put my hook back on here. Make sure before I get too far, I can still do the hook up. Yep. All right. Then I'm going to open it as far as it'll go with the strap there, and I'm going to take it, and I'm going to... Normally I would probably tack it down like way down here, but there's a pocket here, and I don't know... Actually if I do that, then the stitching won't even show. Let's see if I can get it in there. So I wouldn't pull it too tight. You probably want to have a little bit of leeway there, and you just want to tack it like on either side of the zipper piece. I'm going to pin it down. Ow! Pin it down. I passed out myself again. What is it with me stabbing myself today? It's a good thing I'm going to wash this bag. It's probably going to have blood droplets all over it. All right. So then before I go too far, I want to do the same thing over here. So I'm going to take these two ends, which are loose, and I'm going to just swing them around. Again, not pulling it too tight, and I'm going to tack it down on the inside of the bag. This... Even if I used black thread, it wouldn't show too much. I'm using the cream thread, so it shouldn't show hardly at all. Okay. So you just want to like tack here, tack here. Like just do a couple of rows. Do like some either straight or zigzag stitches, and just go back and forth a few times. I'll show you what I mean. Let's do the difficult side first, because I'm not even sure if this is going to work. As far down as like I want to get it. We'll see. I should probably put two pins in that before I get started. I'm going to move the pins up so I can leave them in and they're out of my way. Then we're going to just really put all of this fabric under the presser foot. Keep a hold of our two thread ends. Pull it all the way, all through. You could switch back to your regular presser foot if you wanted for this. I'm not going to. I'm going to make sure my pockets pulled down underneath and out of the way. It's not going to give you a ton of space to work in, but that's why you just want to do one or two stitches back and forth a couple of times. Now with a zipper foot in, I can't do a zigzag, so I'm going to just do a straight stitch. Then I'm going to stop, and I'm going to lift it up and slide it over. I did that right. Take our pins out. Take out the stabby, pokey things so you don't have any more blood on your bag. Cut the thread. Bonus! I didn't stitch my bag close. My pocket. That's always good. We got one side done. Now that's going to be permanently down and out of the way. Let's do the other side. This side should be significantly easier because there's no pocket in the way. You do have to slide the strap and stuff under the presser foot. There we go. Make sure that the fabric is not bunchy and wrinkly underneath. On this end, there's a little bit of zipper fabric that's beyond the teeth of the zipper. I can go straight across without stopping and without worrying about hitting some zipper teeth and breaking a needle. If you're using a plastic zipper, you probably can go right through the teeth and everything and not worry about breaking the needle. This is a metal zipper which is why I picked it to be honest. I don't want to hit the teeth because it'll break a needle. Now my bag has a zipper in it. We can put that back there. It's really heavy. Here's my zipper pull. There we go. Now it's got a nice zip closure and so I don't have to worry too much about being out and about and having anybody even try and get into my bag because it's closed. If you have a leather bag, find a local shoe repairman if you have one. Or maybe if you've got a motorcycle shop that sells leather, maybe they know somebody who can repair leather or fabric. You can take it there and have them put a zipper in it. If you have a fabric bag, this is just thin like cotton canvas or duck cloth. It's not very thick and it works just great like a charm. There you go. I hope it gives you some ideas of what you can do. We will be doing more with zippers and buttonholes, which I hate in future episodes, but if there's anything else you'd like to see on Sewing 101, let me know. That's it for right now. Don't forget the most important thing. Go out and have a great day. Do something nice for yourself because you deserve it. Don't forget to zip your zipper in your bag. Alright, that's it. Bye guys.