Minoru Zip

I couldn’t find a 28-inch (or 30-inch, for that matter) jacket zipper  in dark red for my Minoru jacket, so I bought a much-too-long one in New York, and shortened it myself.  Generally speaking, nylon/plastic zippers are pretty easy to shorten; just chop them off, and tuck the cut edge into the seam, or whatever finish you’re using.  That leaves a bulge at the top, but it works .  .  . sort of.

My jacket zipper needed a stop at the top, but I didn’t want that bump, so  I experimented using a left-over piece from the zipper I cut to fit for for the Minoru hood.

First, I cut the teeth off the top of the zipper to the length I wanted:

(This is the sample zip; on the one I actually used you’d see the plastic bar at the top that serves as the zipper stop if it were unaltered.)

A daub of Fray Check, or the equivalent, is probably a good idea right where the cut ends.  I didn’t do that on this experimental piece.

That gave me the right size, but no way to keep the pull from sliding off when the jacket was zipped up.  After experimenting a bit, I discovered that this worked as a zipper stop:

That’s a tiny seed bead, in a matching color,  hand-sewn to the wrong side of the zipper, between the teeth.  It doesn’t show on the front, but it prevents the zipper pull from flying off at the top of the jacket..

The excess tape, above the zipper teeth, just goes into the seam allowance, the way an unaltered zipper would.  The cut area has been thoroughly Fray Checked, for extra security, though virtually all of the cut bits will be in the seam.

Neat and tidy, no?