Buttonholes Part Two

I did it. I've made two bound buttonholes in my actual jacket and the world didn't end and I didn't have to cut a new front for the jacket! I did spend a whole week practicing though and some of those practice runs were dreadful. However, I learned a huge amount about what did, and did not, work for me. Including, but not confined to:

Don't use cream interfacing on a dark jacket if you are going to do a hand worked buttonhole.

Don't do a hand worked buttonhole unless you know what you are doing (clearly I didn't)

Do use fray stop liberally on the edges of the cut buttonhole (if your fabric allows you to do so).

Do read what it actually says in the book's instructions, not what you thought it said, or feel it should say. And do follow the right sequence of steps because it tells you to sew the buttonhole closed with tailors basting before you sew the thing down for a reason... and that reason is that the buttonhole will gape like Jaws with a tasty surfer in his sights if you don't do this.

If you are going to practice buttonholes, do it with the correct interfacing attached to the scrap.

If you put a much heavier interfacing onto your scrap by accident, you will get a buttonhole that is thick enough to use as a doorstop and spend two days very depressed about your inability to make bound buttonholes that look like the ones in the book.

Even with the right interfacing in, these buttonholes are a bit bulkier than I had anticipated them being so I will have to attach my buttons with a short thread stalk so they don't squash the buttonholes. However, I love the look of the finished article. On this fabric, the buttonholes just disappear. An effect that I tried to improve upon by cutting my patch to form the lips of the buttonholes to follow as closely as possible the pattern of the tweed. The actual instructions said to use a bias cut patch, but this interrupted the pattern of the tweed in a way I wasn't keen on.

In the photo above, which is one of the completed buttonholes on the actual garment, you can see how well the buttonhole blends in.

Throughout the test runs, the thing I had the most trouble with was the back of the buttonholes. The instructions said to carefully mark where the hole was, then cut the facing and turn it in on the back of the buttonhole. Not only was this bulky but it didn't look at all nice at the short ends as try as I might I could not get the tweed to turn in neatly enough for me to be happy with the result. However, whilst reading the reviews submitted for the lined jacket contest on Pattern Review I found a wonderful tip from trishapatk for finishing the back of the buttonholes. She places a square of fusible interfacing with the buttonhole carefully marked on it, onto the facing, in the correct place. She then sews all the way around the outside of the marked buttonhole to make an oblong box. Cuts the box the way you would do the buttonhole, (Y shaped at each end to form a triangle on the short ends which is pulled to the back) and pulls the interfacing to the back, rolling the buttonhole allowances back and slightly under so that you can't see anything and you have this completely tidy little window which, when you have fused the interfacing down to the back, forms a perfect little box which can be neatly and easily sewn down with tiny stitches. I found that if I made my oblong a bit narrower (my buttonhole lips are a quarter inch so I made the backing hole a little over one eighth of an inch from the centre line) the bulk of the back buttonhole finish does not lie directly on top of the bulk from the front buttonhole, which helps to make the buttonhole lie flatter, at least in my tweed it seems to.

I used my quarter inch quilting foot throughout the buttonhole installation. I marked the center line and the start/stop lines on the back of my jacket piece, then drove the machine with the foot up next to the center line to ensure my stitching was exactly the same distance from the center on both sides. For the backing window, I drove with the inside of the toe on the line, which on my quilting foot is one eighth wide. Now I've only tried the backing finish with my scrap pieces, as I have not yet got to that stage on the jacket. However, it was easy, neat and I felt it was secure because the interfacing encloses the raw edges so it is the method I will use for the facing when I get to that stage.

By the way, if you haven't had a look at the divine work in the lined jacket contest on Pattern Review, you may be missing a treat. There are some absolutely stunning garments and voting was immensely difficult.