sewing techniques Archives

Machine-Sewn Buttons

When I teach sewing and students ask about hand vs. machine sewing, I tell them that I machine-sew what I can and hand-sew what I must. There are times you have to hand-sew because you just can’t get the machine where it would need to be, or you need to carefully avoid sewing through all layers of something, but I’m working on reducing the rest of my hand-sewing. I showed you machine-sewn snaps years ago, and now I’ve got machine-sewn buttons.

With snaps the complication was unevenness: the presser foot was too hard to get in position, so I took it off entirely. With buttons, at least in this case (I was sewing a thick pillowcase), the complication was that they needed to have shanks. Toothpicks to the rescue!

Pardon my lint!

There are three toothpicks under the button in this case; for a smaller button you could omit the center toothpick (this may give a shorter shank if the fabric pulls up between the two outside toothpicks, but the smaller the button the less likely you are to need a shank at all). I lined the needle up where it needed to be, placed the toothpicks, and then slid the button in between the toothpicks and presser foot.

It’s quick and easy, though I did secure the thread ends by stitching them all to the back, tying a square knot, and running them between the layers of fabric before snipping them.

Side note:
I made a batch of fabric baggies recently, and with the experience of using my original set for a long time I adjusted the flap size to improve them. I’ve updated the post with baggie sewing instructions accordingly.

Preventing Low-Riding Pants

Pants are difficult. Especially dress pants. If the hips and thighs fit, the waist is at least verging on too big. But dress pants’ waistbands are awful to alter – layers and belt loops and topstitching and often no pre-existing seams. What to do?

I realized that my current dress pants fit great right out of the wash, but as the fabric relaxed (mine all have a little lycra in them) they would sag down on my hips, ending up too low – they didn’t look or feel good and they became too long. I envisioned pants where the legs were made of the gently stretchy fabric but the waist was made from something with no stretch at all, and realized I could mimic that by stabilizing the waist with something non-stretchy.

So here is the technique! I did my first round of waist stabilization back in February, so I can attest it does work. It shows from the outside, but isn’t obvious, especially if you wear your shirts untucked as I do.

Acquire some narrow grosgrain ribbon, or another non-stretchy material.

1. Pin the ribbon to the inside of the waistband, just far enough from the top edge that stitching through its center will be below the top of any belt loops the pants have. You will have to pin from the inside of the waist but sew from the outside of the waist, so have the points of your pins sticking out on the outside of the waist or buried between the layers of the waistband.

2. Looking at the outside of the waistband, sew a straight line down the approximate center of the ribbon. It is more important to have it straight relative to the edge of the waistband than relative to the ribbon. When you get to a belt loop, sew a bit underneath it and then backstitch. Lift your presser foot, pull the fabric out a little (so there is a small loop of thread) and start stitching again past the belt loop, starting with a backstitch to get as close as you can to the belt loop (underneath if possible).

3. Trim the ends of your thread and the loops that bypass each belt loop. Complete!

Taking Out the Hems of Dress Pants

I’ve known for a long time that the commercial blind stitching used for hems of many dress pants and skirts is a chain stitch, which will pull right out if you start it correctly (and knot up if you don’t). Just this weekend, however, I figured out how to reliably start it correctly.

If you look at hem stitching with the end of the pants leg downward, it looks like the drawing above: a series of horizontal dashes with little slanted teardrops extending down in between the dashes. The stitching will pull out to the right. If you can easily see what you’re doing, you can pick away at the loose end of the thread – the left-hand end of where the blindstitch overlaps itself – until the loose end is attached directly to a dash, and pull from there.

If you can’t easily see what you are doing, as was the case with me this weekend (busy fabric, probably inadequate light), you can still pull out commercial hem stitch. There are four steps, shown in the diagram: first, cut the thread toward the left end of a dash. Second, pull the dash’s thread toward the right. It will probably get hung up a little (if not, keep pulling!). Third, pick at the teardrop to the left of your cut in order to free the dash thread. Fourth, pull the dash thread to remove the stitching as far as it will go!

When you can’t start at the very end of the stitching you’ll need multiple rounds of pulling to remove all the stitching, but it’s still very quick – especially compared to a seam ripper!