Katrina Walker

14-Day Learn to Sew Series - Buttonholes

Katrina Walker
Duration:   15  mins

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If you sew, sooner or later, you're going to need to sew a button hole. And luckily, this is a lot easier than you probably think it is. So I'm really happy to show you just how simple it can be. So button holes, of course, are used to close things. Now it can be used for clothing, obviously, or it can even be used for things like home dec. I love to use button holes and buttons on the backs of pillows. I think it's a really fun way to make a pillow closure, for example. So let's go ahead and look at number one, how to place button holes because sometimes that's a little bit of a mystery to people, you know, where should they put them and how do they space them? So I have on my table in front of me, actually, it's the same blouse I'm wearing, just a different fabric. And the way I like to go ahead and space my buttons, now sometimes, the buttons are marked on your pattern, where to put the buttons, usually by the time I get done altering things, my buttons need to be put in a custom location. So I'll tell you my quick strategy for how to decide where to place my button holes, is I will usually decide, for instance on this blouse, I'll decide where I want my first button to be, and then I decide where I want my last button to be. And then I can take the first button and the last button. I can fold my project in half. Now, this is kinda cheating because this particular project has, actually, six button holes, not five like I'm wearing, but if it has five, odd numbers are easier, you can fold it into half, find your middle location, and then you can go ahead and just keep dividing in half to figure out your spacing for the rest of your buttons. Now, of course, I'd give myself one with an even one, so in this case, again, I'll choose where I'm gonna put my first button, then my last button, and then I can actually just measure out my distance and divide it up so you can do it mathematically as well. But I usually like to use odd numbers of buttons. It's funny, I forgot that I used six buttons on that one. I like buttons a lot. But you can either use it, just use odd numbers and use the fold in half method to find, you know, your ends, your middle, and then, of course, divide it up from there. Or you can do it mathematically. But basically, for most things, I figure out where do I want my first button hole? Where do I want my last button? Divide it up accordingly. Okay, another thing you need to look at when you're sewing button holes, is of course, you need to know what button you're using. Not only do you need to know which button in terms of how big to make the button hole, that's important. But you also need to know how far from the edge to be able to place the button hole. Because you don't want your buttons, when your button is buttoned in, and you know, this might pull a little bit, you need to make sure your button isn't sticking out past, say, the front of your garment or your pillow, what have you. If you like to use large buttons, you need to make sure that wherever this, where you sew the button hole on, that needs to, you need to check that with where the end of your button hole stitching is going to be and make sure that it's going to be enough spacing to still look attractive. You don't want it too close to the edge. Now when you go to sew buttons on, you also need to make sure that when you sew your button on, that none of this edge is going to show in the button hole itself so you need to make sure you have enough overlap for a graceful appearance. So you do need to keep an eye on that when you're choosing your spacing for your button holes. Now I always like to have scraps of fabric, you know, for my projects that are interfaced exactly like my facing or my front of my project to make sure I can do test button holes first. So I always test stitch first. And you might be thinking, "Well what is interfacing?" Well we'll show you. So on this blouse we have, this is the inside, and this is what we'd call a facing here. So you have the outside and this happens to have a separate facing sew on. Sometimes the facing will just be a folded edge but in this case, it's been sewn on. And if you look at the back side, you can see this dark material here. This is called interfacing and it gives a little more structure, a little more stability to my fabric and that's excellent for doing button holes. So for my little test sample, my test sample I've prepared here, I did go ahead and use interfacing as well. In this case, I used white to make it more obvious what I was doing when I using, but you go ahead and use interfacing so even if you don't have interfacing for the whole button hole area, it doesn't hurt to just cut a strip, just enough to reinforce the button holes, or you can even just put a little square once you know where you're going to put them, you can put a little square for each button hole. But it really is a good idea if you can to always interface behind. And there's sewing interfacings infusible. This is a heat fusible interfacing. All right, so marking your buttons. So I have a sample button here that I plan on using. This is the button hole foot I'm gonna be demonstrating with. And this particular button hole foot actually has an opening in the back where you can place the button in. But if this is the button hole button I'm using, so again, I want to double check. I wanna make sure that this button hole where the thread gets stitched on the, where the button gets sewn on, the thread is stitched through these holes in the button. So when this is in the button hole, and by the way, button holes can be vertical or horizontal. I personally even though shirts traditionally have vertical button holes, I prefer horizontal so that's, you know, that's a design decision. It's a personal choice. But one thing I need to know, first thing I will check, of course, is the actual placement of my buttons. And I like to use a really long pin for this. These are an extra fine, extra long flower pin and so the first thing I would do is mark with a pin. You can use chalk but I find I have a hard time, sometimes the chalk doesn't always come out and I like to have just that real solid physical reminder of a pin in my project to tell me where my placement is. And you know, there might be another one, say, down here. You know, however my spacing is going to be, for my project, I'll put a pin. Again, for this marking button holes, I like a really long pin and I try to make sure it's very square. It's perpendicular to that line so it's nice and straight because this is my visual guide. If I have to, I can even get out a ruler. All right, so that tells me where I am along my placket or my pillow, whatever I'm doing, where my button hole is going to spaced. Now I need to figure out where my button hole is going to be in relation to the edge and so I will place it where it's pleasing to my eyes. Here, I kinda like it where that little tobacco weave is. And so I will take a second pin, and I will line this up. It happens to be about where that white line is. We're just going to use that white line just to the side of it. But this is basically X marks the spot. So where these two pins cross, that is where I want the opening of my button hole to start and stop. So I want the opening of my button hole there. All right, so that is actually how I mark my button holes. They do have marking tape and things you can use for button holes but I like to use two long pins. All right, now I mentioned this is the button hole foot I'm going to be using, and this is a form of automatic button hole foot and it's somewhat common with some of the newer sewing machines so I feel comfortable using it. Yours might look a little different. This is an automated button hole that is designed to actually be run electronically. It plugs into a fancy computerized machine. You have to line up the little arrow with the little notch and it does it automatically depending on the settings on the screen. So it kinda looks similar but it works in a similar way, but one's computerized and this is manual. Your machine, again, may look a little different. But hopefully, the basic concept is the same. So on this particular button hole, I really like it because you actually place the button into this little holder on the back and that is going to tell my button holder how large to make my button hole which is really, really handy. All right, so I'm gonna go ahead and place this on my machine. And I'm choosing not to put it real tight against my button so my button hole might be a little bit large which is fine. So it just snaps right on to my machine just like a normal sewing foot would. But there is one little different gadget I have to pull down so this pulls down. This little lever pulls down and it goes just behind this little plastic flange here. So this little plastic flange, and again, this is what helps to tell the machine when to stop and start with my button holes. So of course, I need to go ahead and choose the button holes and I'm going to just use one that's fairly basic. I'm gonna use number 15. But I do actually have a selection of various one. Now of course, 18 is for knits. The other ones just have a little decorative end on them. Now most button holes sew in reverse first and then forwards so you have to remember that, again, this is why it's good to practice sewing a button hole before you actually make the button hole for real on your project. Okay, now you remember my little pins here. So these pins, and again, this button holder is going to actually back up and again, I want really long pins. See, I have these notches on the front of this button holder. These long pins will help me to be able to guide this. To line up those, basically, my cross hairs here. Just gonna do that. And sometimes if I'm doing a lot of button holes, I will actually take my marking tape, you know, my painter's tape or what have you, and I'll put painter's tape, once I know where my alignment is for my test stitch out, I'll actually put tape on the bed of the machine so that it's easier for me to line it up in position for each button hole so that's just a little hint for you when you're doing a bunch of them. That really gives you a quick visual. All right, I can see the pin down there in the center. So I see my pin here. I can see my pin here. Lining up, so I'm feeling pretty good about that. I'm gonna go ahead and pull my pins. So I don't want to stitch around those. All right so now it's just time to hit the button and start stitching. All right, let's see how we did. So we're gonna clip our stitches. So once I've stitched my button hole, and it's all tidied up and ready to go, I do like to do one last step before I cut it open and that is to put a little bit of a fray inhibiting liquid. This is, oops, try not to get that much on it. I squeezed a little bit much so be careful. It can really flow. But this will actually help to keep it from fraying so keep your button hole looking good long term. So you let that dry. I'm just gonna blow on it a little bit. And then you're ready to cut your button hole so now, here's another trick for making sure you don't cut your button holes too large. And that is you can put a pin across the ends of your button holes, and this will just help keep you from accidentally cutting them too far. Okay, it's like a little safety check there. So easiest way to cut these is to use, this is a seam ripper. You see how it has this little ball on the end? That tells you where it's actually cutting so I'll put the point in, in the center. And I'll go just toward the middle so again, I have my pin in place to keep myself from making any terrible mistakes. But if I'm just careful and place, you know, start my ripper, at each end, and just cut very carefully, this is really sharp so be very careful, but just cut carefully toward the middle, then I usually don't have any troubles. But putting a pin in the end can really help you to avoid overcutting your button holes. Of course, a little press of, I would of course use a matching thread in real life but there's my little button hole so that's really all there is to it. Just be very careful when you mark but I think you'll find that setting up your pins and maybe putting a guide down in your machine and just practice. Practice, practice, practice. And you will become proficient in sewing button holes. And make beautiful button holes every time.
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