How To Make a Two-Way Zipper

Two-way zippers are really nice for bags of various types. Because you can open them from either side. And you can buy a two-way zipper, or you can buy zipper tape by the yard and make your own. So to do that, you want to just be sure that you're getting the same size of zipper pole. As your zipper.

If you're buying your zipper by the yard, um, from the same place, they should, a lot of times, they'll sell them together, but if you're buying them separately, just make sure that you're getting the same type. So this is a number 5 zipper, so we want to make sure we get a number 5 zipper pole. This is the number 3 zipper, so you can see how much smaller the coil is. And here's a 3 zipper pole. So you can see it's a lot smaller.

Than the number 5, and that's because you want the openings of the pole to match the size. Of the coil that is going to be going through it. So you'll need 2 zipper poles for your two-way zipper, and here's my zipper by the yard, I just have the full yard right here. I'm going to be using this to make a duffel bag, so I have a nice long piece. So I'm going to separate.

My zipper tape. And then we're going to put one pole on, going in one direction. And to do this, we are just going to insert each side of the coil into each of those openings, at a little bit of an angle. And I'm just going to push that zipper pole on from the lower edge. And I, I got that pretty even at the lower edge.

Sometimes you might get a coil or two off, and that's OK. You can just kind of snip that off if you're using a nylon coil zipper. It's easy to just cut through, or you can take it off and try it again and try to get that really nicely even. So there's my one zipper pole, and then I want to put the other pole on. Going from the other direction.

So we're going to do the same thing. Going in at an angle, trying to make sure. That they're going on. Evenly, trying to feed each side of that tape through the pole evenly. And I'm just sort of pushing that on.

And pulling that down, and that looks, I did a pretty good job. It's maybe a little bit off on that side, so what I could do is I'm OK with that. But if you wanted to, because it was this side that I got slightly off, you could just try again. So I could zip this off and try putting it on again, and I like to have this pull up kind of close, as I'm putting the second one on. So that I can see.

where those ends are. so we're pushing that in at an angle. And there's a way, if you're having a hard time holding all of these three things together. You can actually use a fork to help hold this zipper pull, and I'll, I'll. Put a link to a video on how to do that in the description.

So I think I made it worse this time, but you can keep trying until you get that. On the zipper tape so that your ends are even and you don't get any weird bulges here. So each side of the zipper tape is, um, even and you don't have, you know, more coil on this side than the other where these two zipper pulls meet. So if you're making a bag of some sort and you want to be able to open it from each either side. A two-way zipper is a really great addition to a project like that, and it's easy if you have zipper tape and an extra zipper pull, you can make your own.