Yet another repair story

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This is for you @JudyEv! My daughter (‘Big One’) has some boots she loves. But sadly the zip pull on one of them broke right off. And not just the little dangly bit that you actually pull, but the part of the slider that holds it (see photo) so we couldn’t just ‘make do’ with a paperclip inserted through the slot or anything like that. The slider and the zip itself did still work though - if you pulled it up and down with a pair of pliers. It was too painful and difficult to do that with fingers. There is a hole as you can see, but if you poke anything through there it just goes straight into the zip teeth, stopping anything from moving. First I did the obvious thing and looked for someone that could replace the zip (even though I knew this would probably cost more than the boots were worth), but the place I knew that used to do such repairs said they had given up as it was not economical, and I couldn’t find anywhere else. I thought about replacing it myself, but I couldn’t stitch anything like this on my sewing machine and trying to sew in a new zip by hand (and have it look anywhere near presentable!) was just too awful to contemplate. I searched online for ideas about repairing zips or fitting new sliders but drew a blank. I thought of trying to glue something on there, but it had to be able to move otherwise it would just snap off right away, so I couldn't think of a way to do that. Months went by, the boots were still here waiting for a breakthrough. Meanwhile Little One outgrew her, rather similar boots. I was going to offer them on Freegle but closer inspection revealed that they were just too tatty so they were destined for the bin, but of course I couldn’t bring myself to throw them away right away either! So they were literally kicking around the kitchen for a few days. I planned to save the useful bits off those - each boot had two zips and two buckles. Then suddenly I thought maybe I could use one to repair the other? I looked at the zips - the ones on Little One’s boots were obviously shorter than the ones on the bigger boots, but the teeth were the same type and the same size, so the slider should work if I could just get it on. I figured it was worth a try as an unwearable pair of boots couldn’t get a whole lot worse. I chopped the top off the zip on Little One’s old boot and the slider slid off easily of course. Then I carefully unpicked a few stitches at the top of Big One’s boot and, with pointy pliers, pulled off the tiny metal clamps that go over the teeth to mark the top of the zip. Then I was able to pull the slider off that zip as well. That was the easy part. I was left with a boot with a closed zip and I had to try to wiggle the ‘new’ slider onto the top of it, while making sure that the zip didn’t come open while I did so. It took a couple of attempts and I almost gave up, but I’m nothing if not stubborn as my partner will tell you. Eventually, just when I was thinking perhaps it was hopeless after all, I got it on! Then I just had to use the clamps off the other zip to fix over the teeth at the top, and put in a couple of stitches, and it was done! Now it works just as well as before. I’m sure many of you will be thinking that if I had concentrated on my work instead of spending half the afternoon on this, I could have earned enough to buy a new pair of boots, or at least a decent proportion of them, and yes you’d be right, but to me, that’s not the point! I would still have a pair of boots I couldn’t bring myself to throw away! All rights reserved. © Text and image copyright Fleur 2022.