Zipper Heart

When I studied fashion in 2005 zipper jewelry and accessories where all the rage and most of these where really not my style.
However I always had a soft spot for zipper hearts, even collected cool metal teeth zippers for it. Now I finally made one and it is everything I hoped it would be.

• zipper
• fabric
• needle and thread
• fabric glue
• scissor
• gems/beads/bling (optional)

Do you already know where your heart will go? Mine on a jacket on my upper arm, I sized accordingly and drew the shape on my fabric.

The curve of the heart causes excess material and pleads on the inside, so I cut my zipper lengthwise, leaving enough fabric for sewing.

To prevent my cotton fabric from fraying I used fabric glue on the edges, if you use a synthetic zipper you can also melt the edges.

For the straight bits a simple back stitch works fine, if you like me choose to not decorate the end product, take your time to get neat stitches.

I chose to use separate zipper pieces for the two halves, mainly because I did not know how much zipper the swirl would take.

For the curved part, you'll need to stitch the fabric down in place a bit extra.

The swirl.
The smaller the swirl gets, the more stitches you need to keep the zipper down, after the first two layers I switched from a back stitch to placing stitches between the zipper teeth.This really helps with keeping the zipper down as well as making sure the fabric from the previous layer is neatly in place.

Keep going until you reach the middle (unless you want to put some pearls or beads in the middle, then leave room accordingly)

Now your zipper is in place, cut your heart from the fabric and treat the fabric against fraying with fabric glue.

My fabric is no longer visible, but I can still sew it in place with the loose fabric under the zipper part if I want to.

If you do not like your fabric as much, you can totally pimp your heart further, with gems/flat pearls/beads or extra bits of zipper. I had a lot of fun doing this for the picture, not really my jam though.