Friday, September 13, 2013

How to (wrongly) Fix a Broken Zipper

So, I'm sure you guys have many broken zippers on many a wonderful dress. And you want to wear said wonderful dress, but alas, the zipper is broken in such a way that to don the garment you would have to break several modest, and not to mention, cultural, rules.

Putting a zipper on a already-fashioned garment is hard. Especially if said dress has a under-layer that is seamed into the zipper. That was my problem with this dress. In order to properly replace the zipper, I'd have to take apart the whole dress basically, because the dress was seamlessly attached to the lining.

So I decided to go against the rules and attach the zipper my own way. It was quicker and extremely uncomplicated.  If you are looking for a quick, easy way to replace a zipper on a broken garment, this it it.
This is the dress, a Juicy dress I purchased from my local goodwill for $3.50. No, I don't care about name brands. I really liked the dress. But, for 3.50, how could I say no? However, the zipper was stuck. It wouldn't zip! I actually had to cut it out, leaving little tears where the slider met the zipper teeth.

 Then I just pinned another zipper right underneath it, and sewed it in place. See? Hah.



The zipper now works. Why, you might ask, could I not have just added another slider to the original zipper? Well, for one, many of the teeth were mangled on that zipper. And, another--I don't own any sliders that are not attached to zippers already. (You can buy them separately, if you didn't know)

So that is one way to fix a zipper--and I'm sure there are many others. I can think of three unique ways that I've tried myself, on garments in the past. How do you fix broken clothes? Or, like this dresses' previous owner, do you donate them to charity to be bought by people like me?

2 comments:

Rachel G said...

I just sewed a zipper into a dress yesterday! But now it's funny zipper story time: You know how if a dress has a side zipper instead of a back zipper, you can't quite so obviously feel that it's loose? I go to church by myself when Angel works weekends, so one time I happily got dressed, drove to church, and during worship....notice that my dress was totally unzipped down the side. So I, as subtly as possible, zipped it up. I don't like getting dressed by myself. :P

Paulina Dombrowski said...

This reminds me on how I fix zippers. Aka just rip it apart and bobby pin it on until my mom fixes it.