Move a Side Seam Zipper in a Dress

This dress was a little big across the top edge and chest area, but not in the waist. The front had no seams to take in, so the only option I had was to take in the sides a little. The problem? The zipper is a side seam zipper. I took in one side the standard way. I took in the other side by moving each half of the zipper slightly inward, without removing the zipper entirely. The bottom half of the zipper stayed where it was and I coaxed the top half slightly off-line in order to tighten the sideseam. The alteration was not even noticeable.

	To begin with, I took the zipper stitching out, but only about halfway from the top edge down. The dress has a facing at the top, hiding the raw edges and the ends of the zipper tape. I had to remove a few of the topstitched stitches in order to free that edge.
	I then realigned the zipper and pinned it into place. As you can see here, the zipper is moved in about ½". Then it gets tapered back into the original stitch line. I had to stitch the zipper into place using the invisible zipper techniques I explain in step 6 in the Invisible Zipper Tutorial
	I then folded the facing back down, right sides together and serged the excess seam allowance off. (The black you see here is the ribbon for hanging)
	This shows where I need to replace the topstitching. The picture is deceptive. The ends really do meet evenly at the top of the zipper!

Sometimes, messing with the zipper sounds like a scary thing to do. It may be hard to get it to look right. In this case, though it was quite easy and took very little time.