Burda Style For people who sew

I bought a pencil skirt at Zara, and it has a front zipper that goes allllllll the way to the bottom . It looks about like this : http://www1.macys.com/catalog/product/index.ognc?ID=411622&CategoryID=133, but longer (this is a BCBGeneration skirt, mine is about knee-lenght and has an elastic waistband)
The thing is, I would like to shorten it, but I have no idea what will happen to the zipper if I cut it and I don’t want to mess up that skirt. I’m not that good on the sewing machine but I figured that a hem wouldn’t be too hard to do. Could anyone give me advice about that ?
I found nothing on Burda Style but I did find this tutorial (http://sewing.about.com/od/techniques/ss/shortenzipper_5.htm), is it good ?

Oct 31, 2009, 01.12 PM by hola_fannie

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  Nov 1, 2009, 01.20 PMby kaitui_kiwi

  Hi Hola, that tutorial is fine but I prefer to do it slightly differently. With a narrow nosed set of pliers you can remove the upper zipper stops. Open the zipper and carefully fold the stops open and remove them, put aside for later. Next trim the zipper with scissors (you can cut the tape carefully between the teeth but keep it a little longer than needed, so you can fold the top into the waist band) use the pliers to pull off the last few teeth on both sides to the length you need and reattach the stops by crimping them back in their new positions. I leave about 2cm of tape above the tops, then use pinking shears to stop it from fraying, now attach it like normal. Hope that helps! :)
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  Nov 1, 2009, 01.31 PMby KateXXXXXX

  I was thinking just take the zipper right out and shorten it from the closed end, but I know that’s really cheating! ;)

  1 Reply

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    Nov 1, 2009, 05.56 PMby oscarthegrouch108

    i look at it this way, it’s only cheating if someone else knows! besides, no one gets close enough to start picking apart my sewing (and if they are, there’s a problem!)