Zipper Fail

I seem to be experiencing zipper fail.

First, I have a metric crap ton of zippers after purchasing a random selection from Fabric Mart, so I didn't worry about the zipper for the dress.  But they are all invisible and it seems the pattern would like me to do a lapped zipper.  Yes, I could switch it to an invisible zipper and I suppose being invisible it doesn't matter if the colour doesn't match but I thought it was a good opportunity to try a lapped zipper and the colour match is important because it would be irritating to have a grey zipper in a purple dress and not all of my invisible zipper insertions have been truly invisible.

So I went to Fabricland yesterday on my lunch hour and I bought two long purple zippers.  One regular and one invisible in case I gave up on this lapped zipper.

The purple in the long zippers is not the purple of my dress, not by a long shot (and Fabricland assortment being what it is, that is as good as it gets).  So far off that I thought about going back to the grey zipper because at least that would look intentionally mismatched.

But no... I stuck to the lapped zipper goal and used the standard wrong-purple zipper. 

The directions in the pattern have caused me some issues with the use of right/wrong and right/left.  Who's left?  The left when it's right side up or wrong side up?  Argh...  Press which seam allowance twice?  You know silk noil isn't so keen on a heavy press.  It makes me nervous every time I pick up the iron.

I went to my closet to find some RTW with a lapped zipper.  Sometimes seeing the final result helps things click.  I did not realize just how prevalent the invisible zipper is until I went to find something else. 

So I went to my Vogue book on sewing and I didn't get that either because their pictures looked like the closed end of the zipper went to the top.  WTF?

Then I went to the internet.  I thought the Coats & Clark method looked easy, I understood reading it through.  Then I got the dress out and nope, it didn't really make sense either.

I found Casey's post on zipper insertion.  Finally, enough pictures to make sense and the left/right/wrong/right issues were clear.  And the first part went in really well.  Then I tried the lap side.  What a freaking mess.  I managed to sew the dress into the zipper, I had folds in the lap part...  ick. 

I thought maybe I'd try it on with the zipper mostly in because sometimes seeing the potential of how good it's going to look will keep me going.  And it was 11pm, time for bed, I could not end on complete zipper fail. 

I went downstairs to get an opinion from Mr. Lina.  I thought the styling would be something he would like and I've held off on showing him how good the skirt is going to make my bum look.  And... he was too busy watching the end of the movie to come up with anymore more interesting than "It's purple".  Really?  It's purple, I had not noticed.  Sigh.  I should have stuck to my instincts of not showing him a partially finished dress.

The dress won't be touched again for a few days.  We're going to see Lyle Lovett in concert tonight and a friends cottage on the weekend.  Can you hear it laughing at me?  Mocking me from my sewing room.  I am going to show that freaking zipper who's boss.  It is NOT going to win.  I am starting to understand the appeal of a hand picked zipper...