Invisible Zipper Feet are made by the Devil

I am not a terribly intuitive person when it comes to mechanical things. I will be the first to say that I am good at many things, but putting things together, spacial relations, that sort of thing, I am not good at. (I also have a horrible sense of direction, but that's neither here nor there.)

So when the time came to attach the special invisible zipper foot to my sewing machine, I had a few difficulties. I have set many zippers in my time, and as I said in the last post, I'm pretty good at it. This was my first invisible zipper.

My first problem came when I took the zipper out of its packaging and saw this instruction:



Of course, I had already sewn the seam. I decided to wing it rather than picking it out. I ironed the zipper flat as instructed.



Then I took the invisible zipper foot out of its packaging and attempted to assemble it. There were various attachments depending on the "shank" of your sewing machine. Let me make it perfectly clear, I have no clue about anything regarding my machine's shank. Fortunately the packaging offered suggestions based on the machine's manufacturer. Unfortunately my machine's manufacturer had two different option attachments. Neither of them made any sense to me.

I then consulted the internet. Found several blogs/FAQs/etc on invisible zipper installation, of which one was actually vaguely helpful. Spent 15-20 minutes alternately staring at the machine and then running into the living room to stare at the pictures on the computer. This became very frustrating. Finally realized that the invisible zipper presser foot did not snap on/off like regular presser feet. Rather, I had to unscrew and replace the entire presser foot apparatus. If you have a sewing machine, this might make sense. If you don't, don't worry about it, just trust me that it is really unintuitive and would have been MUCH easier if someone had, I don't know, SPELLED THAT OUT IN THE DIRECTIONS.

Did I mention all this was on Thursday night? Can you tell that I'm still annoyed about it?

Anyway, here, finally is the installed presser foot.



Once I had that taken care of, getting the zipper in was pretty simple. Here it is half done:


I could see where the installation would have been much simpler if I hadn't already sewn the seam. In fact, when I got the zipper in, the seam ended up being crooked, so I had to rip it out anyway. Oh well.

Also I have some basting pinhole issues that I have to deal with or I'm going to have to remove and resew the skirt. Oh and the darts are showing through on the bodice just the tiniest bit, but it's bugging me, so I'm going to trim off the excess fabric there.

Still, definite progress made. I'm cautiously optimistic that I might be able to finish by this weekend. Very cautiously.