Curved Zipper Question

[Tim Zen]

After making the mountain poncho last month, I am working on a tarp & bug net.
I would like a single, curved zipper on the end. Is it tricky putting in a curved zipper?
Any suggestions?

The other solution is using two straight zippers along each side of the triangle, meeting at the apex.

Current tub with bug net design… Yellow is noseeum, white is silnylon.

[Ken Thompson]

When you pick up some coil zipper, lay it down and you will be able to figure out how much of a curve you can put in. Not so hard. Zipper foot and pins are your friends here.

[Tim Zen]

Ken, Zipper foot! I will pick one up. My seam ripper needs another friend.

Sounds like a good case for a trial piece. Thank you.

[Ken Thompson]

The zipper foot lets you sew right up against the teeth and allows you to make a tighter radius than the regular foot. No seam ripper should be lonely.

[Lance M]

I think you should be able to use #3 coil zipper to do something like this:

It's an ellipse approximately 24" radius x 12" radius.

The solid ellipse is the center of the zipper. The dashed ones represent the stich lines between the zipper and the fabric. Keep in mind that the 'outboard' stitch line is longer than the 'inboard' stitch line. The 'outboard' mesh needs to be compressed and the inboard mesh needs to be stretched a bit.

To do a neater job, you can use alignment marks on the fabric and zipper. One way is to pin one half of the zipper (1/2 of the zipper bends easier and it's easier to line up the coils with the proposed cut line) along the proposed cut line of the door panel and then put chalk marks on both the zipper and fabric.

Transfer the chalk mark to the other half of the zipper. Cut the mesh, align, pin and sew.

You could also use a paper pattern for laying out alignment marks. Or you could simply determine halves/quarters/eights by folding(requires a bit of stretching too).

The zipper is terminated into the door/floor seam at both ends. In contrast, trying to terminate two separate zippers where they come together at the top can be messy.

Hope this helps

[Tim Zen]

Lance: It all makes sense now.
Your dimensions are on the money. I will need a 48 inch long zipper.
Quest has them at $1/yard. I can complete my order this weekend. Thank you.

[peter vacco]

greetings ;
when you go to bend your zipper and install it, you gonna have a sit where there is not a whole lot of material to turn back to keep it from fraying.
do as ken says and get that zipper foot, they are adj one side to the other and REAL handy. moving on to that fraying issue. …
if the zipper (from OWC in my case) is 5/16" wide, you will have only 5/32" material per side to turn back.
here's what you can do to help. you can heat cut the material, and this will usually melt the edges and keep it from fraying. but oh peter, how in the heck do we heat cut this stuff to exact size and shape.
well .. we (using those layout marks so nicely presented in the previous post) install our zipper facing the correct direction and sew down Both sides, then .. because before we sewed it in, we layed a 1/4" strip of aluminised tape down the center of it, we can use our thumb-nial to crease it, and then you can willy nilly just heat cut right down the middle of the thing and it will come out sweet.
i wrote and long and unpublished article on this years ago. but bottom line. before taking tools to material PRE TEST EACH AND EVERY OPERATION. then you have a good chance of doing it correctly the first time.
the small remainng flap of material is heat bonded (test your glue FIRST) down.
i have installed three tent windows so far this way, and they come out great.

good luck !

v.

[Sam Farrington]

Peter,
It sounds like what you are suggesting is to lay and pin the zipper out on the material/netting where desired, sew both sides near the tape edges, hot cut over the zipper center, then fold the material from the center under itself and top stitch again closer to the edge of the coils (zipper center) with the zipper foot. Result = 2 rows of stitching on each side of the zipper.

Someone suggested this, maybe it was you, and said it worked great. I've not had the nerve to try it, but would appreciate knowing if I understand you correctly.

Thanks.

P.S. Occasionally, I find that one of the zipper tapes goes all curly on one side, even when the zipper is sewn to a straight (not curved) edge. Does anyone have a fix on why this happens and how to avoid it?

[Author]

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