Go back two spaces

I've decided to put an invisible zipper in the back of my SWAP blouses...I don't like making button loops and I hate buttoning them even more, not to mention the whole faced slit issue. So I added a seam allowance at the back and, last night, I *tried* to put the zipper in the first blouse.

I had to do a little creative thinking; this blouse has a scrunched mock-t type neckline. The collar piece is cut on the bias, and the facing portion of the collar is interfaced and about 1/3 the depth of the rest of the collar, which is gathered at the CB seam to fit the facing. The pattern guide instructs pressing the SA up on the facing, sewing the yet-to-be gathered side of the collar to the neckline, then gathering it, then sewing the facing to it, RST, at the back and turning the facing to the wrong side and hand stitching it down. Now, since I wanted to put in an invisible zipper, I had to gather the edges of the collar, but sew the zipper on before I sewed down the facing portion of the collar. I had a brilliant idea and cut two narrow strips of fusible interfacing the length of the seam, gathered the edge to fit and fused the strips to the gathers to hold them in place. So far so good.

The trouble started when I sewed the zipper in. Of course, getting the back seam to match at the neckline and top was a big deal and I pinned and matched and matched and pinned. After the zipper was in, though, I found that one side had shifted slightly (it is a pretty bulky seam in that area) and it was a very little bit off...that is, the neckline seam on one side was just a little higher than the other. But I decided I could live with it, as it was in the back and not noticeable from, say, two feet.

But then I tried to turn the blouse right side out and discovered that, in my obsession with gettting the seams to match, I'd managed to sew the zipper in with one side twisted at the shoulder. I essentially had a funky looking Mobius strip, and the only fix was to take the zipper off and redo it. Well, that just meant I could fix the slight (and it really was very slight) mismatch at the collar seam.

So, I unpicked half the zipper, straightened out the fabric, moved the zipper by the amount it was off and resewed the seam.

Only to discover that I'd moved the zipper the wrong direction. What was a very slight mismatch is now a glaring boo-boo.

I threw the blouse on the ironing board and went to bed. Perhaps I'll get to the seam ripper today...