Ha all. So every time I make a pattern and sew in the sipper, the panel I am working on shrinks. I finally realized that I was not including the doubling of the seam allowance when I top stitch. However, how do I include the width of the zipper in my pattern...Do I just add 1/2" for the zipper exposure and tack that on to the matching panel? Is there a better way of doing all this?

Thanks for your help! There's a lot more to sewing than I realized...

Edit: I should add that this is really only giving me trouble if one side is a diagonal...Pretty straightforward on a square, but adding in the different allowances on the diagonal is hard to get my head around.