MIKA Day 6

Hello friends! It's been one of those days. Too much, too little, too late. Luck favors the prepared! Yeah, that's not really me...

So, you are all waiting to find out my cuff decision. The tension, the suspense, the drama: Long story short (short pants long), NO CUFFS! Dah-ling. You push too hard, but I accept. I come with a challenge (please continue to read this entire post in Edna Modes-mode complete with accent...)

The zipper fly! I just finished that up and it is past eleven, so I again do not have the benefit of the gorgeous perfect California daylight. But I think these pictures are still worth a thousand words, just not a thousand really pretty words. I can count on one hand the number of times I've put in a zipper fly. So if you dig Schadenfreude, it might be worth sticking around. And there are other ways to put in a zipper. Just so you know.



What we do after the whole cuffs/no cuffs debacle is stitch the inseam. Now I've got two finished pant legs.



I turn one leg right side out and stuff it into the pant leg turned right side in and align the, um, you know, the crotch. Can we use the German word? "Schritt"? It will be our little secret code. I just think that English word is so... So, we align the Schritt and stitch the seam closed until we reach the base of the rise.



I cut a piece of material the length of my fly and just a bit wider than the zipper. Here, I've used the pattern piece to get the angle of the bottom just so, but that's only because I'm posting every last stitch on my blog and I need my three readers to be duly impressed. The strip of fabric can really just be straight across on the bottom. Nobody's going to see it, unless you feel a real need to post it on a blog. I will fold this piece in half lengthwise (as shown), press and finish the open side edge and the bottom edge with a four-thread over-edge stitch.



What I lack in good photography, I make up for with the label maker.

A boy's fly will open this-a-way.



A girl's fly will open this-a-way.



I've labeled the parts we are going to be dealing with A, B, C, D, and E. I get a little confused as to which is right and which is the other right, so this way I hope to make things clearer. And I'm also afraid if I use the correct terminology, for example "wrong side", some of you might think something is really wrong, when it's not. Enough semantics: Dolly is showing us essentially how the fly will stack. A and B are the two extended facings on the pants. C is the extra bit of material that will lie under the zipper. D and E are either tape sides of the zipper.



I will switch my pressure foot to a zipper foot and I will remember to adjust the needle way to the right so as to not break the needle by stitching--bam!--right in the middle of the foot (I will break the needle in a latter step, no worries, I'll get to that). I will stitch the zipper tape onto this extra piece of material so that the D side is flush with the folded side of the extra piece of material C. (Why flush with that side? I really don't know. I must practice this some more). I will have my needle on the right side of the foot and the coil to the left. To stitch around the slider, first open the zipper a bit, stitch past the top stop, lift the pressure foot with the needle down, pull the slider back to the top, then continue stitching.





Now I press the two extended facings A & B back. Here's the thing: A is pressed as if it were to go straight up from the crotch seam. Now B is pressed just a little bit, 3 mm, over that center line. You can kind of imagine that this 3 mm is exactly where the coil of the zipper is going to be.

I stitch E+C to extended facing A, making sure the zipper coil is right at the center seam.



I fold that bit of C out of the way. I pin D to B and stitch the tape to the front of the pants. I turn the pants, change threads and topstitch along this already stitched line, to the crotch seam, where I end with a bar tack. No, I end in a blob of thread in which the broken needle is embedded. Not so good. As it is, I pick out the clumped thread as best I can and stay stitch with this topstitching thread. But you? You be good and put a nice bar tack right there.

And finally topstitch along the Schritt seam.





So, yeah, that's about it. High five, Dolly.





Well, not really...

Tomorrow, the waistband!