The zipper is in! Whew, what a task that was. We learned how to do a centered zipper in class, but of course my pattern called for a lapped zipper. I took some scrap yarn and followed the nice pictures in the Singer Sewing Essentials book and, miracle of miracles, it worked! But when I went to do the zipper on the actual dress, I realized that the seam allowance was too small to do all that stitching, particularly the top-stitching to finish the side that overlaps. Then I remembered that I'd read somewhere (totally forgotten where) that you can extend the seam allowance with bias tape, so I spent the boys' naptime driving to the fabric store for the tape. Tape on, zipper in, and voila!

Dressy fits pretty well now that the zipper's in. And doing the zipper wasn't so bad. Maybe now I can try knitting a sweater with a zipper (something like Joseph perhaps?). That way I can use the cute little zipper foot again. It's so neat! I did find the whole shift it to the left, then shift it to the right thing a little tricky though. At one point, I didn't know which side to put it on and apparently left it in the middle. Snap! First needle broken. Guess I'll have to make another trip to the store!