This reader-submitted tip was originally featured in Threads #182 (December 2015/January 2016).

When you sew a garment with a fly zipper, the instructions call for careful topstitching, often including two parallel rows of stitching. Try as I might, I could never produce a clean traced line to follow on the fabric. Recently, I was making a pair of white wool slacks, which I did not want to mark. I traced the topstitching template onto freezer paper, cut it out, and ironed the freezer-paper template, shiny side down, directly over the fly. It was flat and easy to stitch around and peel off, and I didn’t have to worry about removing marks from the fabric. I was able to topstitch the fly easily and accurately.

-Ruthe Ploskunyak, Fairfield,Connecticut

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