a sort-of tutorial

Some of you asked me how to make the zipper rosettes. Now, I'm calling this a "sort-of tutorial" because Lauren and I really just made it up as we went. I had made a different type of zipper flower before, but we liked these better and tried to copy them.
Also, metal zippers are hard to come by, and you really want the metal teeth for contrast with the zipper tape. We found these at the fashion district in LA when I was visiting Lauren. JoAnn's has some with metal teeth, but they're the chunky sport zippers and the teeth are much too big. Vintage zippers all have the metal teeth, so check out antique stores, flea markets, or on etsy. { And if you find some, buy a few extra for me please! :) }

So with all that, here goes:
We started with a piece about 20" long.
Take off the zipper by cutting just above the bottom edge where it makes the zipper stop, then zip it right off. For each rosette you only use one half.
Machine baste (long stitches) along the opposite edge of the teeth, do not back stitch. And leave a tail long enough to grab with your hands.
Knot one end of threads together, and pull the top thread on the opposite end to gather the zipper tape. The amount of gathering depends on the size of the rosette you want. We played around with that a lot, and found that you don't need to gather much to get good results.
Wind the zipper up in a coil, starting really right and working out. Here's where you just do what works best for you. I hot glued mine along the way at certain points to make it hold, and Lauren hand sewed underneath. We had several failed attempts, but eventually got the hang of it. Just play around with it until you like what you see! (Jen, the backside naturally flattens out as you go)

For the necklace, we sewed all 3 to a single piece of felt, then attached a chain to the back.
For the bracelet, Lauren added a little leaf. Sew a circle of elastic to fit around your wrist. Make a circle of felt to fit underneath the rosette, hot glue one edge. Put the elastic against the bottom of rosette, fold the felt over elastic and glue on the opposite side. So basically you have a tunnel for the elastic to go through.

Right now, I'm fooling around with trying to make one like these!