The zipper in my schooling boots broke about 1 month ago, so I head off to the shoe repair guy who tells me it will be $60 to fix just one boot and he can’t get to it for 3-4 weeks because he’s so busy. I’m sad, but I need to break in the newer show boots eventually so leave the boot with him.
After a couple of days of killer blisters, I decide I really want my schooling boots back and since I’m now retired and a pretty good seamstress, I’m going to take a crack at doing the zipper replacement myself. How hard can it be? I retrieve the boot from the shoe repair guy.
Well, I’m here to tell you that it’s plenty hard. First I needed to get a sewing machine that can sew through leather. I did some “research” aka Google and found this cool little machine touted on several YouTube channels.
Yes, that’s a hand crank. Long story short, it works like a dream. Actually replacing a zipper is more like a nightmare!
There are issues with the stability of the stand, so Mr. Atlatl helped me put together something more sturdy that we mounted to a Black and Decker Workmate portable workbench.
Trick #1 comes down to having enough clearance to accommodate the length of the boot shaft and reach the bottom of the zipper, we mounted the machine 3 times to finally accomplish this and it’s still a close fit ( I have a long leg). Trick #2 is practice as are tricks #3 through #27.
The bobbin is NOT like a regular sewing machine bobbin (at least not like my machine) so that took some YouTube viewing because Ikea instructions are like Encyclopedia Britannica compared to the instructions that came with this baby!
Finally, I was able to install a working zipper only to discover that I had totally forgotten about these little gems called zipper stops so when I zipped the boot up, the pull came right off. There are a couple of fixes for this, like installing zipper stops (thank you Seattle Fabrics for carrying such things), that I’m happy to share with anyone interested.
Anyway, zipper reinstalled, hand stitched zipper stops and I’m back in business. Some folks at the barn have old boots they’re willing to let me practice on because nobody is going to pay me to do this anytime soon.
Moral of the story; I’m in about $175 just in materials not counting my time so that $60 is looking like more of a bargain. That said, I’m retired and like doing things myself so I’ll probably keep at it and hopefully improve. I’m also hoping to get better at identifying when the zipper needs to be replaced and when other fixes (new pull) may apply.
Has anyone else taken on zipper repair?
