Don’t Fear the (Replacement) Zipper


The one act of sewing that universally strikes fear into the heart of even the most sturdy sewing enthusiast is the act of putting in a zipper. So much consternation caused by two little innocent strips of teeth, but why? I’m going to say the root of this evil is not installing a new zipper, but rather the latent fear replacing a broken zipper. After all, we can sew, right? So how hard could it be to just take out that old broken zipper and pop in a new one? Pretty hard, cupcake. Pretty hard. Here are a few tips to increase your odds of success.

  • Plan… with your phone! I know you want to hurry up and get started, but before you do, let’s make a preemptive strike towards success. Everyone has a cell phone now and thus easy access to something better than memory – photography! Before going at it with the seam ripper, take some pictures of what it looked like before you ripped it apart (both sides!). You are really going to appreciate some reference pics in about 15 minutes.
  • Rip it good – Once you go at those jeans with the seam ripper and quickly find out how hard that is, the initial inclination is to just take out enough stitches to get that sucker out of there. Herein lies the problem. If you just barely had enough room to get the old one out, then getting in the new one will be harder than parking an F150 in a Boston parking garage. You are going to have to rip those stitches back, waaaaay back. You are going to want to rip out enough seams to be able to lay the whole thing flat.
  • Baste, not waste – Next, I’m going to recommend something that is pretty much anathema to modern sewists: basting. I know we live in an age of the Clover® Wonder Clip – possibly the greatest quilting accessory ever – so why ever baste again? Zippers, my friend. Zippers. Basting will enable you to get into all those little, tiny seams and corners. Normally, one rips out the basting stitches after the job is done, but in the case of zippers, I just use the same color thread as is the zipper and leave those little guys in there because, after all, we’ve done enough ripping for today.
  • The right tool for the job – Finally, my last tip for guaranteed zipper success is please use a zipper foot. If you don’t have one, you can get an after market knock off zipper foot at your local big box sewing and crafts store for a few dollars. It is worth the drive to the store, even if you do end up buying more fabric that you don’t need while there. The zipper foot enables you to get really close to the teeth. Trying to use a regular foot will result in you having to sew with the teeth under the foot and that’s going to skate all over the place and leave the stitches really loopy.

I hope these recommendations will help make your next zipper repair project a success. Before you know it, you’ll be doing what I do: taking zippers out of old jeans and saving them, just for the sake of having a bunch of cool little zippers!


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By the Yard® 2025 Calendar for Quilters

Fall Into Quilting

It might already be too late

Fall is the perfect time for quilting. Summer vacations are over; the kids are back to school; work hasn’t
hit the inevitable end of the year crunch yet, and the quilt shops have all their holiday colors out in full
bloom. Time to start making holiday gifts… or is it?
Every year right about this time, I am stricken with the ambition to make handmade gifts for everyone I
know. Then, with startling regularity, the last week in December I’m scrambling for gifts because I pretty
much didn’t finish anything. What is a habitual crafter to do? Consider this:

  • Start Early – For what is worth, it’s October. Its already too late. Juts go back to knitting your
    Rhinebeck sweater. You might (barely) still have a shot at that.
  • Prune the List – I know you are awesome and crafty, and it would be cool to give some
    handmade love to everyone, but you need to be realistic. Pick one or two top loved ones to craft
    for this year.
  • Cookies are Still Handmade – Everyone else can get a tin of homemade cookies. How else could
    you bang out 10 handmade gifts in an afternoon? You know that cute tiny Santa fabric you
    didn’t have time to make into rug mugs for your entire quilt guild? Just cut a square with your
    pinking shears, affix with a ribbon to the top of a mason jar full of cookies and it’s pretty good
    enough.
  • Get a Jump on Next Year – Everything you planned to do but it’s already way too late (refer
    back to #1), just make it anyway. You will have a head start on next year. I have said this for
    three years running and I still haven’t finished a January birthday gift for my Bestie. It will get
    done eventually and when it does, its going to be awesome!

Remember, there are always local donut shop gift cards.


Check out the NEW By the Yard® 2025 Calendar for Quilters!

By the Yard® 2025 Calendar for Quilters

Making Room for the New Quilt

I got a ticket for quilitng

Is it ever acceptable to start a new quilt when you still haven’t finished the one you’ve been wokring on? I always feel very guilty buying fabric for a new project when I know there is another project lying in pieces all over my sewing table. However, there are some cases when it’s OK to set an in-progress project aside to start something new. Consider these:

  • A gift-giving occasion has arisen – You never know, a baby shower could pop up at any moment. It is always defensible to set aside the old for the time being to start something new. After all, you are on a 9-month time limit and baby quilts are so cute and fun!
  • I’m pulling out my hair – Your current project is just too difficult or demanding right now given everything else that’s on your plate (work, kids, the garden needs weeding again…). Now would be a good time to undertake something simpler and more relaxing.
  • This is never getting finished – We all have that one project. The one we started with the best intentions. It’s been years now and you no longer work on it. Yet it sits there in the corner mocking you. It’s time to let that one go. Rip it part and make it into something new or donate it and all its parts to someone else who can make good use of it. Try again with something else!

If you are feeling unmotivated or some other new sewing circumstances have arisen, it’s not a crime to set your current project aside. Woking on something new might even generate the spark you need to get the old project finished. Imagine how good you’ll feel with two finished projects!


Check out the NEW By the Yard® 2025 Calendar for Quilters!

By the Yard® 2025 Calendar for Quilters

I’m Positive My Bobbin is Half Full

Is your bobbin half empty or half full?

Is your bobbin half empty or half full? It all depends on how you look at it. As a full-time working mom with a hideous day job, a business on the side and a busy kiddo, I feel like I never have time for my sewing projects. The stacks of uncut fabric and partially completely projects strewn all over the place are pretty strong indicators of my lack of available time for hobbies. I can easily get to feeling down about this state of affairs. But it doesn’t have to be this way.

Lately I’ve been trying to look at my opportunities for spending time on sewing projects from a viewpoint of abundance rather than scarcity. Instead of thinking “I never have time for sewing!”, I’ve been trying to reframe that thinking to “I had a chance to do 30 minutes of sewing today!”, or “I’m never getting this gift done in time for Christmas!” to “I’ll have it done in time for their birthday”, or better yet “I’ll give it to them when it’s done, whether it’s a holiday or birthday or not!”.

Sewing and crafting are supposed to be fun hobbies, not meant to feel as chores or yet another undone thing on the to-do list. So, the next time you feel like “I never get anything done!”, just try to spend 20 minutes on a project. You will be amazed at how much better you will feel. Those 20 minutes will add up and you’ll be done in no time, ready to fill up that bobbin and start on the next sewing project!

Finding Fun Along the Way

Just a few changes

When I first starting dating Train Guy, we didn’t go on the normal dates. Instead of restaurants, nightclubs, movies or the typical dating dreck, we took a less conventional route. We went to quilt shops, hobby shops, quilt shows and model railroading shows. Now that I think if it, I’m not really sure how this pattern evolved. I’m pretty sure it was something like, Him: “What do you want to do this weekend?” Me: “Well there’s a quilt show I wanted to go to…”, thinking he’d take a hard pass and I’d have to find some other time to go by myself. To my surprise, his response was an enthusiastic, “OK!”

After that, the next weekend we looked for something model train related for him. It turns out, I found model railroading to be very cool. It reminded me of the modeling that I did when I was growing up. I had a dollhouse which I adored and made everything you can think of for the stylish 1:12 scale family. I’m not kidding when I say I actually used the line “Want to come in and see my dollhouse?” at one point in our early dating days. We had to get down on the floor, as I had recently moved and didn’t have it set up on a table. I pulled out all the little wooden furniture I’d made over the years, recounting how old I was when I made each piece and proudly showing off the insane level of detail. Case in point, I once made a sewing machine that flipped up out of a little cabinet and even had spools of real thread with little holes in them so they could actually set on the machine. The little machine also had an actual needle and a little stitch length lever made from a glass head pin. As I learned more about model railroading culture, I found out that that kind of crazy attention to detail made one what is known in the model railroading vernacular as a “rivet counter”. Upon that realization, Train Guy was more smitten with me than if I’d showed up to our date in a leather mini skirt.

For Train Guy’s part, I’m not sure that he really cared much about quilting per se, but he really enjoyed all the tools and widgets we quilter’s use. He was particularly excited about rulers and cutting implements, specifically how one could cut up fabric faster. Back at home, he designed a system of clamps and rulers derived from his wood working tools by which he could cut an entire yard of fabric into perfect 2.5” strips in less than a minute. Now that’s the kind of man you want to keep around.

Those dating days are far behind us now, but today whenever we go on any kind of vacation or even mini-road trip, we start out by mapping all the quilt and train shops as well as any shows or events. The fun of finding new places and the joys of seeing something new never ends!

The REAL Reason I Buy So Much Fabric

Maybe someday

For we quilters there are a lot of excuses for buying fabric that you don’t really need. The explanations are many, such as: “I’m bored with what I’m working on”, “I need it for a gift”, “I don’t have just what I need at home in my stash” or “looking at new fabrics inspire new ideas!”. For me, there is really just one explanation that covers it all: digital printing.
I first started seeing digitally printed fabrics in the early 2000’s, although the technology existed twenty some-odd years earlier. The first digitally printed fabrics I saw were very nerdy looking geometric stuff that appeared to be more like diagrams in a lab report from back in my old my MIT days than fabric designs. Fortunately, the florals soon arrived, and they were sumptuous. I was especially fond of anything from Hoffman California. I even went through a period that lasted at least two years of only buying Hoffman’s.
As the technology improved, the costs went down and now digital printing on fabric is everywhere. With traditional printing, each color required a new screen and with each screen the production costs went up. There was a practical limit to how many colors one could have in any one bolt of fabric. Now with digital printing, there is virtually no limit to the number of colors per design. Additionally, the lines can be very thin and crisp, making for a very vivid, even photo-realistic design.
The final benefit of digital printing is the one I like best: Digital printing opens up the market to a whole new generation of independent fabric design artists. Gone are the days of having to work for one of the major fabric producers and only being able to produce designs that the marketing team thought would sell a zillion bolts. Now, independent designers can print as few as 20 yards economically, making for a much larger variety of choices for the fabric consumer. Designers can afford to take chances on niche designs… and do they ever! As a result, there are so many interesting fabrics available today that I simply cannot help myself! I love the diversity of the design and color choices but most importantly, I’m so thrilled to be able to support independent designers.