ZipperEnd -tutorial

One of my long-term-projects is finished now. It is the new covers for the dog beds. Here you can see the old cover of this wooden bench the dogs use as one of their beds. The old covers were made of brand new furniture fabric over 15 years ago. Inside the covers I used an old mattress of old sofas we had received old and at the end recycled after over a decade use. The mattresses inside are still perfect.

Slowly the old covers arrived to the end of their lives. That's why I have collected old jeans in purpose for this project for years. I used my last collection of old jeans in June 2015 for the SeaSideOfficeChair. 

I used the leg parts of the jeans and one jeans jacket. Every now and then I had quite a puzzle of this on the floor of my sewing room. I could have made much more complicated patchwork quilt covers of the jeans. I decided not to and sew only as few seams as possible. Because the covers will face quite a pressure so there will be less seams to get broken.

The dogs sleep in the library where's also the SeaSideOfficeChair by my desk. Also the SummerOfficeChair is still in use.

I show you how to make the zipper ends in the way that it needs a bit more work but actually makes it all easier in sewing and in use in a covers like these. You can do this also without the fabric ends. If you are using the zippers bought by the meters they don't have the factory made ends. That means the critical place of the zippers to get broken are the ends if they are facing the strong pressure. That's why I make the fabric ends for example in these dog bed covers. Also, I made longer ends to get them over the corners. If the zipper ends in the corner, that creates the pressure too.

Once you've made the fabric ends for the zipper, sew the zipper from it's one side, but leave the 1 cm seam allowance without sewing at the end. 

Turn the other side and use scissors to make a small cut in this way. Cut only the basic fabric, not the zipper or its fabric end. Make the cut end 1-2mm before the sewing stitch end. Now you get a kind of triangle at the end of the sipper.

Turn again the right side up. Push the triangle in and pin.

Do the same for the both zipper ends.

Stitch the zipper's seam allowance first on the side you worked on. Then pin and sew the other side of the zipper. Ta-dah, you've done.

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This is FashionNOW project. Almost all the materials used are recycled. The jeans are old ones which have got too small. One zipper is from the old cover and the other zipper is new because one old cover had already old re-used zipper and it finally needed to be changed. The mattress are from old sofas.