Posted by dravon in Pipeline Update | Comments Off on Buttonhole Headaches on the White Wool Vest
Buttonhole Headaches on the White Wool Vest
I have never, ever had this much trouble trying to put buttonholes onto a garment. I think in the last post I mentioned that I was putting the keyhole buttonholes onto the vest but the keyhole looked smeared rather than round. Jane suggested I try embroidering them. Worth a go!
After much forgetting, I finally had all the materials in the same place at the same time, and gave the embroidered buttonhole a try. Since I work at a sewing machine dealer, I have to use a variety of machines in order to learn them all. In this case, I was using the Viking Designer Diamond Deluxe – which is the same machine that I have at home. heh.
I did some test stitch outs and noticed that the keyhole made while in embroidery mode looked a little wimpy and loose. I tried increasing the density, and while the legs of the buttonhole looked better, it made the keyhole no better. In the embroidery mode, I copied the buttonhole and overlaid them but offset so that the fill was better. See above to see the difference, and I was quite pleased with that. Turns out that the embroidery mode also does not lay down the straight stitching reinforcement before it does the zigzag, which did bother me somewhat but there wasn’t much I could do about that so I let it go.
Here’s a picture of the on screen embroidery design from within Viking’s Precise Positioning module. I chose to position the buttonhole by the farthest out center point on the keyhole. You can see in the picture that the buttonhole is doubled. Using precise position, I was able to get those buttonholes so precision placed it was a joy. AWESOME!
During the stitchout, here it is at the end of the first pass getting ready to tie off. You can see the legs (or beads) of the buttonhole are not exactly satiny looking – which is the goal. Lookin’ good!
Here’s the second pass, and the legs are filling in nicely and so is the keyhole frame. Loving it!
Here is the front of the vest with all of the buttonholes in it. I was absolutely blown away by exactly how precise I could position these things on the Diamond. Wow!! I remember trying to do buttonholes on the Designer SE, which was the previous top-of-the-line before the Diamond. Perhaps I didn’t know how to use the machine fully (which is most likely) but I was manually positioning embroidered decorative buttonholes for the green rayon shirt which I post-mortemed over on my LiveJournal before I started this one. Excitedly, I began to pull out the basting pins and remove the stabilizer…
… at which point I turned OVER the item and saw the backside. *cue horrified scream* And this picture was taken after cleaning it up. This was unusable. Attempting to cut open the buttonhole would sever the bobbin thread and over the life of the garment, the buttonholes would come out. Since I screwed up the buttonholes on the immediately previous vest, I absolutely refused to let this stand.
So I ripped out every single buttonhole that I had spent the entire freakin’ morning putting in. *sigh* I think this was like the 4th or 5th time I’d had to remove them.
But they are DONE demit. And despite the too-much-oil (which will wash out), they look good. Finally. It’s now time to cut them open. After discovering the buttonhole chisel (as I also talk about in the LJ post), I don’t use seam rippers or scissors to cut open the hole. The chisel is precise, easy and results in a good looking opening.
I will say that the chisel point does need to be positioned carefully. It’s very easy to get that really sharp blade right on the edge where the thread goes into the fabric (which is what I’m resting on this picture). Tapping the chisel right then will sever all those threads on the buttonhole, and that would have seriously been disappointing. Aware of that, I was exceedingly careful and all was good and beautiful.
See?! Good and beautiful. Hubby decided he wanted covered buttons for this one. I made them, put them on, took some pictures, and then every single one of them came apart when reopening the formerly finished vest. *facepalm*
If you are going to use those Dritz covered button kits, get the version with the serrated teeth. The smooth edged ones are a complete waste of money if you expect them to actually work in addition to looking pretty. Hubby has one of them falling apart every time he puts on a vest which has them. Now I have to go find them, so that I can sew them on and be done with this thing. I have an art quilt to start!
And that was how I spent the bulk of my day. Tomorrow is starts the Baby Lock Embroidery Mastery class which I’m teaching, and the afternoon features the lecture class called Sewing 101. Won’t be a lot of time for sewing until the weekend, and Saturday is my “car maintenance day” so I don’t know how much I’ll get done then either. Sunday is my birthday. Yay birthdays! Don’t really expect to get anything done. Then next Monday through Wednesday I’m expecting to go down to San Diego for Pfaff’s Get Creative event. Fun! Really won’t get much sewing done then, but I might learn some things that I’ll be too excited about not to share.
Until we meet again, Happy Sewing!
– Dravon
