button tricks

 

I’m finally getting around to doing the buttons for ‘Granville’ - I wanted 3 or 4 large buttons just at the top but large buttons seem to be very hard to come by unless you have access to a good button shop which I don’t - we’re down to the local Fabricland as virtually the only source for buttons - even Wal-Mart doesn’t  have them any longer....so, not much  to choose from. And, when you have an off-colour like this ‘mushroom grey’ it’s really limited. Even discounting the size I wanted, it was tough - pewter was the closest thing, but size-wise the largest I could find were 7/8"/23mm - not big enough. I did find some reasonably-priced large black ones, but they are pretty boring and black buttons would limit what I could wear with it...I had some pearly grey buttons that were big enough and sort of the right colour, but they're really ugly and cheapened the finished look...what to do?

What to do? I didn’t want to wait for my next trip out of town to maybe get lucky, so I put two buttons together! The trick - line up the holes for sewing, of course and with my trusty, hot-glue gun, put a dab of glue on the bottom button, press the top one in place and hold for a second or two...

Most buttons are not totally flat, either top or bottom and, the bit of wax/glue makes a cushion between - what I did was...on a piece of Styrofoam, pin the buttons with two darning needles to align the holes and hold the buttons in place. Angle the needles out slightly so the top button can be pulled up to apply the glue and then quickly press down to flatten and set. If you mess up, it let cool completely and use a flat blade to pry apart, pick the glue off and try again...