My Victorian Christmas Caroling Costume: Buttonholes of Despair, and Buttonholes of Deliverance

Victorian Christmas Caroling Dress Debut!

My Victorian Christmas caroling costume made from Simplicity pattern #1818 is finally finished, and now I need to catch up with my blog posts in fits and snatches as time permits.  Today I'll share the saga of the buttonholes.

Bernina Automatic Buttonhole Foot 3A with Leveler Accessory

My Bernina 750QE only came with one buttonhole foot, presser foot #3A, shown in the photo above.  I'm also using an optional accessory in that photo, the Buttonhole Leveler, because I'm stitching buttonholes perpendicular to the garment edge over a seam allowance and the automatic buttonhole foot needs to be perfectly flat and level to work properly.  So the Automatic Buttonhole foot for the computerized Berninas really is totally automatic on computerized machines like mine.  You select the buttonhole style you want on-screen, enter the size buttonhole you want and make any desired changes to the buttonhole width and/or the spacing of the stitches, step on your presser foot, and then the entire buttonhole is sewn in one step from beginning to end without you having to do anything else.  Subsequent buttonholes come out exactly identical to the first one.  Sounds great, right?  It is great, BUT...  Notice how BIG that buttonhole foot is?  My dress bodice has boning sewn into a dart that is right near where the buttonholes need to go.  Since the boning was angled rather than parallel to the front garment edge, I was able to sew the first few buttonholes at the top of the bodice with this presser foot.  But then when I got near the boning the foot started to get hung up.  I ripped three buttonholes out of my silk shantung dress bodice, sweating bullets with every flick of my seam ripper... 

I tried the Buttonhole Leveler.  I tried a different accessory, the Buttonhole Compensation Plates (designed more for sewing buttonholes on thick terry cloth or fleece, but I figured I'd give it a try anyway).  Nothing worked.  Finally, I read in my Bernina Feetures book that the manual buttonhole foot 3C was recommended for sewing buttonholes that were either larger than the maximum size of foot 3A -- or for sewing buttonholes "in tight places such as collar stands."  Eureka!

Manual Buttonhole Foot 3C for 9 mm Berninas

I had to wait a day to get the 3C Buttonhole foot, but that was exactly what I needed for this project.  See how much smaller that foot is?  Stitching out the buttonhole was almost as easy with manual foot 3C as it was with the automatic foot 3A. 

Manual Buttonhole on Bernina 750QE

I just had to mark the length of the buttonhole beforehand and sew the buttonhole in 7 steps instead of one.  I selected the same style of buttonhole that I had used for the others, but could not input the length ahead of time.  Then the machine stitched out the buttonhole the same way as before, except that I had to sew down to the end of the buttonhole, then tell the machine it could go to the next step by pressing the arrow on the screen, etc.  It still stitched out the same buttonhole the same way, and the resulting buttonhole would be identical to the others if the stitching on the last automatic buttonhole hadn't gotten denser when the foot ran into the boning.  The two buttonholes on the left in that photo were stitched with the automatic buttonhole foot, and the buttonhole on the right was stitched with the manual buttonhole foot.  I had no trouble with the manual foot whatsoever, even on the last buttonhole that had to fit at the pointy end of the bodice right between the seam allowances and the blasted boning. 

Buttonhole Success!

The moral of this story is not that the automatic buttonhole foot is no good; just that it has limitations.  With the manual buttonhole foot, there is a chance of operator error if I don't draw the buttonholes exactly the same length or I don't stop the machine at exactly the same length with each buttonhole.  If I was doing buttonholes down the front of a normal blouse, the automatic buttonhole would be a godsend.  However, the drawbacks are that the automatic buttonhole foot has to be perfectly flat and level (which is where those optional accessories come in handy), and it simply will not work at all in situations where a buttonhole has to fit into a tight space, like what I encountered with this project.

I'm glad that I ultimately decided to stitch my buttonholes with the same 50/3 Gutermann cotton construction thread, because it's a perfect color match to my dress fabric and my buttonholes ended up looking pretty invisible.

Finished Buttonholes, Awaiting Buttons!

They look pretty good, right?  So then I sewed on my buttons.  I did fabric-covered buttons in Bridal size 20, using the same black silk shantung as I used for the contrasting ruffles on my dress.  I sewed stabilizer buttons on the back of each covered buttons for greater stability and longevity.  This was a pain in the butt, and may contribute to my difficulty buttoning and unbuttoning the bodice with my broken thumb, but whatever -- what's done is done.  I didn't want my buttons to rip through the silk after repeated wearings.

Stabilizer Buttons for Greater Support

That's all you get for today.  Next time I'll tell you how I did the rows of scalloped knife pleated ruffle trim on the bottom of my skirt.  Have a great weekend, everyone!