no more fear... of buttons!

Before the purchase of my 'new to me' sewing machine, the Elna Quilter's Dream 6003, I had avoided buttons and buttonholes like the plague. My old machine (as I understood, but never actually tried) took a four step process to make buttonholes. This scared me.

Then I got the new machine. It came with 3 automatic one-step buttonholes. This seemed fascinating and I wanted to give it a whirl. It took two things for me to take the first step. The first was for my friend Jacki to come over and show me how to use this interesting device called a buttonhole foot. The second step was to have a project to practice making buttonholes.

I watched in awe as she put a button in the back of the foot, pressed a couple of buttons on the front of the sewing machine and then pressed the foot control. Like magic, the machine make a prefect buttonhole! That was sooo cool! I think I could do that.

I made my first buttonholes on my first tester dress shirt. They were... not perfect, but looked good enough. As I write this post I now have put buttonholes and buttons on half a dozen projects. I love it! Now I even have a preference (other than the default) of settings for perfect buttonholes.

Even better... Jacki has a blog post on How To Machine-Sew a Button. I've taken this one step further after a conversation with my sister where she told me she puts a toothpick under the button as she sews it to give a little wiggle room. Of course, I couldn't get that to work, but found perfection when using a fondue fork under the button for the wiggle room. ;-) Sometimes you have to get a little creative.

Now, I have no fear of buttons!