Sewing Machines Juneau AK

Sally from Sew Sally teaches sewing classes in Portland, Oregon and today she teaches us how to create a buttonhole. You can learn more about Sally here . Tomorrow we’ll share buttonhole tutorials for a variety of sewing machine brands (many machines have their own process “quirks”), including the old stand-by bartack approach. With Sally’s help you don’t have to be intimidated by buttonholes!

From Sally: The first thing to do is measure the button, to know how big of a buttonhole you will need. The length of the buttonhole should be the diameter of the button PLUS the thickness of the button PLUS 1/8” for wiggle room.

If you are using a shank button, measure the diameter and the shank plus 1/8” for wiggle room. If you use a ball button, wrap a ¼” strip of paper around the button, marking the circumference and add 1/8” to that length.

Now get your machine set up to sew a buttonhole. Be sure you are using a suitable needle. Regular weight cotton or polyester thread gives good results. Buttonhole twist is best suited to hand-sewn buttonholes and can add unnecessary bulk to your machine-sewn buttonhole.

Some machines have a hole in the finger of the bobbin case. Thread the bobbin regularly and then thread it through the hole in the finger. This will increase the bobbin tension, helping pull the thread to the underside and resulting in a more rounded appearance in the stitching on the right side.

Be sure to use the correct foot. The foot should have two grooves on the bottom (or one extra-wide groove) to accommodate the two rows of satin stitches. An automatic buttonhole foot will have markings on the side to measure the length of the buttonhole.

I have set the red sliding arrow on the left of the foot to the measurement that equals diameter of my button plus button thickness plus 1/8”.

Begin sewing. On my machine, I sew until the red arrow is pointing to a small red dot and then I push the reverse button. This tells the machine that the buttonhole is long enough. The left side of the buttonhole is complete.

And then my machine sews back up to the top of the buttonhole, makes the bar tack at the top, sews the right side of the buttonhole, and then the bar tack at the bottom.

When I raise my presser foot, the automatic buttonhole foot slides back to the starting point and the machine is ready to make an identical buttonhole.

Now I’m ready to cut open the buttonhole. I place pins at each end, just inside the bar tacks. This keeps me from cutting through the bar tacks. I use a seam ripper, but small sharp scissors would work equally well. Start in the middle, cut toward one pin, then turn and cut toward the other pin.

Test to see if the button fits!

Now you might be ready to make some adjustments:
- Lower your top tension and the thread will get pulled down to the underneath side. Adjust about a half step at a time, testin...