Tutorial: Buttonholes

Another old-but-new tutorial! This one focuses on creating buttonholes by hand, as not everyone has a sewing machine with a buttonhole attachment. Besides, hand sewn buttonholes have a unique charm that machined ones lack. How many times can I say 'buttonholes' in a paragraph? Buttonholes.

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Buttonholes are an essential part of any garment, especially on men’s clothing. They can be found at the center front of a doublet, the sleeves’ wrists, and various forms of pants. During the Renaissance period, buttonholes sat perpendicular to whatever they were closing up. This means that your doublet’s buttonholes would sit horizontally, as well as those on a wrist closure. They are rather simple to do, once you get the hang of the stitch. Like most of what I do, these are the quick and dirty version. We could do them the prettier way, but this method is easy and only requires learning one new stitch. And my way has more character. Yeah, character.

What you’ll need:

Your garment

Needle

Scissors

Thread (preferably buttonhole twist, though embroidery floss can do in a pinch)

Step 1: Decide just how large it needs to be. Generally, when you’re sewing a buttonhole, your stitches are going to close up the space a bit. Plus, you want a little bit of room to be able to button a garment with ease. The button I’m using is about ¾”, so I’m going to mark the hole at 1”.

Step 2: Carefully make your incision, ensuring that you have evenly cut through all layers of your garment.

Step 3: Starting from the backside of the garment, let your thread form a loop over the buttonhole. Pass the needle over the top of the loop, into the buttonhole, through the garment, and back over the thread. Pull your thread taut, and you have completed your first buttonhole stitch! Buttonholes look best when they’re sewn about 1/8” to 1/4” from the edge of the cut.

Step 4: Continue stitching your way around the hole in the same manner. Once you come back to where you started, tie off your thread.

Hey, look! A completed buttonhole! If you’ve followed my crap directions well, your buttonhole should have little knots around the edge, protecting the fabric from fraying with use. Do not be too concerned about having a messy buttonhole – there are plenty of extant garments with sloppy finish work. An imperfect buttonhole or eyelet is historically accurate!

Tutorial: Hand Bound Eyelets

Hey, another released tutorial! If you've mastered spiral lacing and are looking for a really special detail that takes your garment from Costume to Clothing, this is it! Why use grommets when you can have beautiful eyelets that compliment your garment, instead of detracting from it? 

These are somewhat old tutorials with equally old photos taken from a cellphone camera. In other words, please pardon their quality (or lack thereof).

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Eyelets are an integral part of any costume. They close up a bodice and cinch a corset, and allow men to tie their hose and sleeves into their doublets. Eyelets are also more forgiving than buttonholes, allowing the wearer to adjust for weight fluctuations. Best of all, they’re easy to do! Once you’re into the swing of things, an eyelet can take only a few minutes to make, and is easy enough that you can sew them while watching reruns.

What You’ll Need:

Your garment

Needle

Thread (regular thread will do, embroidery floss or button twist is better)

Scissors

Awl

Step 1: After figuring out proper eyelet placement, carefully jam your awl into your garment. Shove it in there, wiggle it around a bit, whatever you need to get it in. The reason an awl is so essential is that while a pair of scissors cuts threads, the awl will simply spread them apart, which helps maintain the garment’s strength.

 

Step 2: Pass your threaded needle up through the backside of the garment and make a running stitch around the hole you made with your awl, about 1/8” away. You can take the awl out or leave it in, for this.

 

Step 3: If you haven’t already done so, remove the awl, now. Pass your needle up through the hole and down through the fabric, covering up the running stitch you made. The eyelet hole will want to close up, so feel free to ram the awl back through as much as you need. Keep stitching through the hole and back down into the fabric.

  

 

Step Four: Once you have completed sewing your eyelet, flip your garment over so that the underside is facing you and tie a knot.

Pro Tip: For extra strength and durability, you can even add a metal ring over the eyelet hole and sew over and it and the fabric! Split rings (for jewelry) and solid rings are best. Jump rings will eventually spread under pressure.

You should be left with something like this. Do not worry about how neat/symmetrical/perfect your eyelet is – there are plenty of extant garments with sloppy eyelets. Imperfection is historically accurate! Once you get used to it, you’ll be an eyelet-making machine!

How to Make Your Own Cross Stitch Pattern

I said I'd do an update on Sforza and Gaddi, but well, this isn't it.

If you're like me, you've found that you're unsatisfied with following the readymade cross stitch patterns on the market. You might, like me, long to create your own pieces. And, like me, you probably don't want to spend money on software to do it for you. I'm poor folk, and I can't afford a fancy schmancy computer program - Adobe already emptied my pockets.

Doing it by hand is easier than you might think. First and foremost, decide on what you want to embroider. If you have a photo or printout, you're about halfway there. If you're like me and can't find a big enough jpeg to print, you do it by hand on tracing paper.

Next step is to get ahold of some 1/16" graph paper. I can't afford to buy a pad, so my awesome boyfriend printed a few sheets for me. Slap your original image onto a light table, and tape it well while you're down there. Next, tape your (makeshift) graph paper on top of the image/drawing. If you, again, are like me and can't afford a light table, you can flip a clear plastic bin over and stick a bright light under it. Cheap and effective.

The next bit is coloring your graph paper square by square. This part is a bit of a painstaking process. Fortunately, after years of "dolling" I'm used to drawing one pixel at a time, so this part isn't so bad. Here's a snippet of what I've got so far. I'll be slowly working on this over the next few/several weeks/months, in between paying stuff. Here's hoping I don't forget about it in the meantime.

New Side Project

In between a few different commissions, working on a number of dance costumes, and the Halloween season (sideshow gigs), I've decided to start a new side project. I got re-addicted to cross stitch, and am in the planning stages of developing a new pattern: Francesco de' Medici's coat of arms. If all goes according to plan (read: I don't hate the project before I finish it), this will be displayed in either San Lorenzo's guild yard or safely at home. So far, I've got a black and white copy that I've filled in with color, to get an idea of what I want to do.

I was undecided whether or not the figures (seraphim?) should have blue or green tunics, and gold or burgundy tassels hanging from the Maltese crosses. After coloring everything, I think I'll be going with the light green tunics to tie in with the garlands, and the burgundy tassels, to add weight to the bottom.

Since the original image gets pixelated at even the size of a quarter page, I went ahead and freehanded an approximation of the original image.

It's not perfect, but it's close enough for cross stitch. Also: Yay, tracing paper for creating symmetry!

The image, so far, is roughly 14"x14". The next step will be to get the drawing on a light table, under some graph paper, and fill out the 1/16" squares with color. It's a tedious way to map out a cross stitch pattern, but I don't have a program that will do it for me, and this method will give me the results I want. I also don't have a light table, which means I'll be improvising with a glass-top table that's been sitting in my mom's barn. Necessity is the mother of invention, right?