Zippered Buttercup

I’ve been trying to play around with zippers more. I have the zippered pocket down, but I still find myself reaching for my zippered bags sometimes and I would love to make some more. This time I used the Buttercup pattern because it’s easy to modify and it doesn’t use a lot of fabric. I was also playing around with interfacing. I love the SF-101 I used on the body. I use that on almost everything, even under fusible fleece (FF and I are not getting along right now.) The band needed to be stiffer because of the zipper, so I used decor bond but I’m not happy with the result. Decor bond gets really wrinkly unless you are working with something completely flat. Once you turn it, bend it or rumple it in any way and you can’t iron it completely flat again, this is what decor bond does. I ironed that band like crazy after I turned it and after I top stitched it, but still it’s all rumpled. Blah. Anyway, on to the zipper:

The construction of the zipper was fine. I used a little tab at the end and left space (about 3/4 of an inch) at the ends so it didn’t get sewn into the side seams. Next time I will leave more space. I turned the open end under just like my little VB. The other option is to leave a tail and add a pull tab, but I did that last time so I wanted to try it this way. My goal here is to get the purse to open as wide as possible while unzipped. Putting tabs at both ends or sewing the zipper into the side seam both make it more difficult to open the purse. I want the purse to function as much like an open purse as possible. I got very close here, except the zipper is set way too low. I left myself a decent seam allowance on both sides of the zipper and didn’t end up using it. So I’d like to bring it maybe 1/2-3/4 inch closer to the top. That might make it harder to sew inside & outside together and topstitch, though. We’ll see how that works.

See how it’s set too low?