Making a buttonhole is one tricky task, and most people find it very annoying to hand sew all the buttonholes; plus, it takes a lot of time and effort. The good thing about recent sewing machines is that they have functions to make a buttonhole with the machine and that too in different designs. Hence, it makes your task super easy and effortless.
Let’s discuss a few ways to make a buttonhole with a machine.
Installation of Buttonhole Presser Foot
Hole: This is the first part; it’s a little hole where your needles go through, and it’s the starting point of your buttonhole.
Shank clamp: The second part is a little bar where your shank clamps on.
Sliding holder: At the end of the buttonhole, there is a sliding holder for your button. If your button is bigger, the clamp will slide just a little or maybe won’t slide. For smaller ones, it will slide enough to hold your button tightly with a clamp.
Install:
- First of all, you need to take out your foot.
- Slide the buttonhole under, right beneath the shank, so that it can clamp on really easily.
- Once your button is in there, on the slider holder, there’s a little lever in your machine which you have to bring done to match it White Square on the buttonhole. This will let your foot know how big the buttonhole needs to be.
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How to Make a Buttonhole on a Sewing Machine
After your buttonhole foot is installed, you can start sewing. You have to put the pressure foot down and pull down the little lever, again for knowing the size of your button so that you can make a hole according to it. Then you have to press go, and everything will be done by the machine.
It works really fast with very clean stitches; within a min or two, you will get your buttonhole ready. After all four sides are done, you need to make a hole by yourself between the stitched buttons so that your button can go in.
For that, you need a seam ripper to open up the front. The material might fray a little bit, but if you have a stabilizer, it will prevent that a little bit more or maybe some fusible stabilizer. So that’s it, the buttonhole will be perfect and neat.
Fabrics Can Work On
So, with the buttonholes, it’s going to work just as well on the knit fabric as it did on the woven fabric.
Take a nice, lightweight knit fabric. Double it up; you can also put some stabilizer underneath; that helps. You can use embroidery thread and a topstitch needle, and it’s going to look really, really nice. After it’s done, you can do the same thing as discussed earlier, take a seam ripper and open the front on the button.
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Some Useful Tips
Making a buttonhole is a very easy task. Actually, you just need to know how to function the machine properly and install the buttonhole foot. However, just a few tips if you need to get a buttonhole.
- Try to mark where you are going to have your button be. You can mark the end and the centre of your buttonhole; it makes things really easy.
- It would be helpful for some people to put a stabilizer underneath the fabric to help the buttonhole stay a little more secure.
- If you are making a buttonhole, it doesn’t always have to be for the button. You could thread rip and through the buttonhole, maybe put drawstrings through here. It’s just a really handy tool to help make perfect openings.
So, it’s just up to you, whatever you want to do.
Conclusion
If you are new to buttonholes, you can practice making it on some rough fabric; it really takes one or two tries to make a perfect buttonhole. You can use a lot of different fabrics, from jeans to just simple woven fabric.
To sum everything that is discussed so far, if the installing is done right, you will get a nice, neat, and pretty buttonhole.
I hope the article was helpful.