Buttonholes

The jacket has three buttons, and thus, three button holes. One of the buttonholes is in the waist seam where the bodice joins the peplum and whilst making the actual buttonhole seems a fairly simple process, finishing the back of it is less simple involving as it does a need to cut a hole in the facing in exactly the right place and neatly turning the edges of said hole in by hand, evenly, neatly and sufficiently securely as to make the buttonhole usable. I have grave doubts about my ability to do this sufficiently neatly in mid weight tweed with two layers of interfacing on it, but I suppose I will have to do as Tim Gunn would no doubt advise me, and “make it work”. I daresay like a lot of things sewing related, it will be down to practice, practice and more practice.

I figured that since I had to cut a hole in my facing to accommodate the inseam buttonhole, I might as well just bite the bullet and make the other two buttonholes bound ones since they require the same treatment at the back. Although I’ve done practice buttonholes on scraps at various times, I’ve never actually got up the courage to make this kind of buttonhole in an actual garment before. I am currently working on practice runs on fabric scraps interfaced with the exact same combination of interfacings as I will be dealing with on the real thing and have tried two methods;
Making the lips of the welt first and applying these to the outside of the garment before cutting open the buttonhole and turning them through.
The patch method where a small bias cut patch is applied to the front of the garment then the buttonhole is cut and the patch turned through. .
I tried the first method initially but the result was bulky and I couldn’t access the triangles to sew them down. I have always found this method to be fiddly, difficult and to result in a very bulky buttonhole whenever I have run tests and this was no exception. So, reverting to plan B, I have tried the patch method and I think this might be going to work better for this particular fabric though I have only done two practice buttonholes this way as yet. The bulk is much less, the two I’ve made so far came out with the welts even, I have more to hold onto when I am turning the pieces through, and I am more confident that any parts that were considering fraying are sufficiently covered by the fabric square as to be protected from further damage. So this week I shall be practicing my buttonholes. At least there’s only three buttonholes to do on the final garment.