Preparing to Sew a Buttonhole

Video Transcript

Hi, I'm Candi Cane Cannel with Expert Village. In this clip I'm going to show you how to do the prep work for your buttonhole. The first thing you want to do is take your button and figure out how big it is. If you buy commercial buttons, they will say on the back they will have a measurement but a lot of times if you go to flea markets, or vintage stores, or even some specialty fabric stores you can find really cool vintage buttons that you just don't know the size. So you just want to take a ruler and basically you're just measuring it and you want to measure from with widest point to the widest point. In this case, this is an inch so what we're going to do is go to your fabric and you want to measure out an inch but you want to take it in about 1/8" either way. So it's fine 1/8" mark and most rulers will have the small lines or 1/8" and just make a little mark. When you're going to be doing a buttonhole on the machine you are going to need a buttonhole foot and this comes with most machines but if you have a vintage machine or a machine that you got second hand you can find these at most fabric stores. It's just really easy to change out your foot usually you'll have zigzag foot already on and there's a little lever in the back you just flip the lever pull it out. Make sure to keep your thread to the side and you want to position the buttonhole foot so that all the lines are facing downward and you have this little groove up here that your foot slides in. So you just stick it underneath line it up to the shank that attaches the foot and you just pull it down, put it back up and you are ready to start your buttonhole.

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