Did you know you can easily shorten a nylon zipper? No special tools required (unlike shortening a metal zipper).
And to be clear, a nylon zipper is a zipper with nylon zipper teeth; not metal teeth and not hard plastic teeth. This method for shortening a zipper is for zippers with nylon teeth.
Even though zippers come in many sizes sometimes they don’t come in the size you need or the size you need in the color you want. But that isn’t going to be a problem. Buy a zipper longer than you need, in the color you need, and shorten it.
Nylon zippers are shortened from the bottom up, not the top down. So measure from the top of the zipper down to where you need the zipper stop to be. The zipper stop is the end of your zipper, not how long the zipper tape is.
Keep in mind where the zipper pull is supposed to be when the zipper is closed on your finished project. (The pattern will tell you. It might say to place the pull 3/4 inches, or another distance, down from the fabric edge)
Thread a needle and simple sew over the teeth a few times where you marked.
You’re making a new zipper stop out of the thread.
Cut off the excess length but leave some zipper tape beyond the new thread stop so the zipper can be sewn down. The zipper tape shouldn’t unravel but you could always apply Fray Check to the raw edge to seal it.
That’s it. You’re done. Your zipper is now the correct length for your project.
Need to shorten a metal zipper? That’s easy too. Here’s how.