The First Communion Dress Project – part 4

This is the forth article on the First Communion Dress project.  I am sewing my daughter’s first Communion dress using my wedding dress.

The seam had caught some of the embroidery so I re-embroidered across the seam to fix it.

After I had the embroidery repaired I sewed the side seams and shoulders according to the pattern’s directions.

Hannah was excited to try it on:

Now comes the wretched part:  the zipper.

I am not good at setting in zippers.  I get impatient with them and they just drive me batty.  To make things more interesting I really wanted to put in an invisible zipper.

There are a couple nice tutorials online about invisible zipper insertion.

I like this one: Sewing Invisible Zipper.

I did a couple things slightly different.  First I put a bit of lightweight interfacing just inside the seam line on the wrong side.

The next “deviation” was to put lace seam binding tape on the right side just over thee edge.  This lace serves two purposes.  First it gives me a nice even line to sew the zipper against and second, the lace finish give a bit of grab so the zipper isn’t sliding around against the satin while I am trying to sew it in.  It also edge – its primary purpose.

Then I followed the normal procedure for putting the zipper in.  It went in like a charm, but there was a problem.

crap.  I hate zippers.  So I had to tear the whole thing out and do it again.  And this was a perfectly amateurish error that I shouldn’t have made in the first place.

The cat was amused at least:

So I carefully lined everything back up and did it again:

Perfect!  I pulled the zipper closed and everything lined up, the zipper lays flat without any puckering or bulging.  Joy!

I loved the little covered end on the zipper over at Sewing Divas, so I incorporated it here:

You can also see how the layers work together here.  The interfacing and seam binding giving just the right support for the zipper.  The sad things is all this is covered by the lining in the finished dress, but the most loving stitches are the ones that never show.