Sewing and with Liesl Gibson

Chapter 1 - Intro Intro to Buttonholes - holes really seem to intimidate people, but they're surprisingly easy to sew and very straightforward. (playful music)

Chapter 2 - Buttonholes Buttonholes (upbeat music) - [Instructor] Buttonholes are made up with a series of little zigzag stitches. There are four sides to a . It's always a good idea to interface your fabric to give it a little extra stability before you your buttonhole. When you mark the position of a buttonhole, have the button that you'll actually be using for that buttonhole along with you. Then, we mark the length of the buttonhole and the position of the buttonhole. As a general rule for most buttons, you would make the buttonhole about an eighth of an inch longer than the length of the button, itself, and that's simply to make it easy to get the button in and out of the buttonhole. Then, we'll sew each of the four sides of the buttonhole. I'm using the buttonhole foot for this machine and I'm going to carefully position the very top edge of the buttonhole. I'm checking with my needle to make sure it's in the right spot, and I think I want it to go right about there, right at the center-top edge of it and just slightly off to the left because I'm going to be stitching the left side first. I'm just over to the left, slightly and at the very top of the buttonhole. And now, I can start . And you can see it's just a series of very small, close zigzags that are going right down one long edge of the buttonhole. Now, when I get to that bottom marking, I'm gonna raise the needle and then change to the bar position. I'm raising the needle because you can see that the needle will move around when I change stitches. And so, I wanna be sure that it's up out of the fabric so it doesn't shift the fabric at the same time. Now, I'm gonna stitch the bar tack on the end just a few times. It doesn't need to be a lot. And then, again, I have the needle raised so that I can go over to the third side. And now, we're gonna stitch the same little zigzags, but this time, it's going backwards. And I'm not really doing anything to the fabric here. I'm letting the buttonhole foot do all of the work here because it's going to hold the fabric steady and position it where it needs to go. I don't wanna be shifting it because then, my buttonhole won't stitch properly. So, now, I'm back to the top of the buttonhole. I'm going to, again, make sure the needle is up and change over to my bar tack again. And there we are. I left the tails a little bit long on this buttonhole because instead of just trimming them and having them possibly come unstitched here, I'm going to turn the buttonhole over to the other side and if you pull on the threads on the opposite side, you can catch a little loop. And if you pull on that loop, you'll see, I'm pulling the thread through to the back. And sometimes, it can do both of them. Yep, here's the other one. And now, I've got a clean-looking buttonhole on this side. I will knot all the threads on the back, and that will keep the buttonhole from fraying. And it will look nice and neat on the front. If you have a little sealant or some fabric glue, you could even put a little bit on that knot to hold it. So, there's our buttonhole. I think the safest way to open a buttonhole is to use the . And I like to do it like this. I always away from the end of the button. And I insert the point at the very end of the buttonhole and then come up again so that I don't accidentally cut anything. So, once that little point is sticking back out of the buttonhole, then, you can easily cut it. And it's not going to slip and cut into your stitching or beyond the buttonhole at all.

© Liesl Gibson and Creativebug Inc., 2020 1 Then, turn it around and do the same thing on the other side. So, it can go in at the end of the buttonhole, come back up a little ways in, and you'll only cut that section that you've gone down through. Then, once you've done that, you can just continue cutting the rest of it. No accidents this way. And there we go. To mark the position of the button, itself, you can just take a and sink the pin through the buttonhole near one end, generally. And then, if you lift the buttonhole... I'll mark with my fabric marker the position where I'm going to sew that button. Take the pin out. And now, we know exactly where the button is going to go. I've doubled my thread and made a knot in the end. And now, I'm ready to sew the button. I'll start out by taking a little stitch right where the button's going to be positioned. And I usually start the buttonhole with that knot on the top of the fabric because it will be hidden that way. It won't show through the back of the fabric. Now, I'll add the button, coming up through one hole, down through another. And I'll take one stitch right where my first stitch was. I started to secure the button. Now, I'm going to make the by lifting up the button. And I'm just going to insert my matchstick right in between the button and the fabric, right within the stitch that I took. And then, I can continue to stitch the button. I'll come up through one hole... And you can do this in a really fluid motion. I'll go down through the other hole and take the stitch at the same time. And I'll just do that repeatedly. Come up through one hole and then, in one motion, go down through the second hole and take that stitch. And because my thread is doubled, I don't need to take very many stitches here. I think that will be enough. And now, I'll do the same thing, using the other two holes on my button. Come up through this hole and then, going around that matchstick again, take one stitch. And I think one more stitch will be plenty. Okay, now, to form the shank, itself, I'll just push this matchstick out of the way. And you can see, we have a little space between the button and the fabric now. I'm just gonna take the thread and start to wind it around all of the stitches a few times, not too many times. And then, I'll just take a little stitch right near the threads, themselves. I'll take another little stitch there, and then, this time, I'm going to take my needle through that loop, the resulting loop, and that will make a little knot right at the base of the buttonhole. And then, just to end it, you can do that one or two more times, if you like. To end it, I'll just push the needle through the shank and then, I can the thread. And we have a really well-secured button with a nice little shank underneath that will be really secure, it won't come off very easily at all.

© Liesl Gibson and Creativebug Inc., 2020 2