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Tuesday, February 5, 2013

Shortening Jacket Sleeves with Zipper Detail

The sleeves on this designer jacket need shortening. The zipper on this sleeve is very long, so I chose to shorten the zipper at the bottom rather than removing the entire zipper and moving it up on the sleeve.

 I had used pins to fit the jacket on my client. I marked the new finished sleeve length with thread tracing, and then removed the existing hem, and loosened the lining.
 Using a needle nosed pliers I pulled off the individual zipper teeth until I was a bit above the new hem line.
This required quite a bit of strength. Those teeth were very securely attached to the zipper tape. Next I went to my stash of zipper parts and found matching zipper stops.
I crimped these securely onto the zipper tape at the new finished hem length.  I cut the sleeve shorter leaving a 2" hem. I very loosely hemmed the sleeve by hand and then brought the shortened lining down over the hem.
 Shortening a jacket sleeve with this detail is quite time consuming, and sometimes I regret that people have duplicates of body parts, for when I was done with one sleeve I still had a whole other sleeve to tackle!
 This client has about seven jackets all with very complicated sleeve detail, so I will be working on her things for some time......
 Hey, and the upside is that I will be paid nicely for my ability to do this.....
I am so glad that "ready-to-wear" usually isn't!!



3 comments:

  1. An interesting diy procedure.
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  2. Thank you for sharing this. I had despaired at the idea of doing an alteration on sleeves with a zipper detail at the end, but this at least makes me believe in the possibility. Not that I'm confident enough in my own abilities to try doing it myself, but at least I could go to a tailor knowing they could manage it.

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  3. What would you charge for this job? I have the exact job to do for someone and am having a hard time deciding on a fair price. Thank you.

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