Pencil Girl's Buttonhole Tutorial

Pencil Girl was teaching a class and it appears the old-fashioned way of making buttonholes (the four-step buttonhole) is no longer relevant (lol). The Modern One-step is the way to go.






This is my new Pfaff Quilter's Expression 4.0.

This is the lovely buttonhole foot sensamatic thingamajig. It's stored on board behind the presser foot. Most modern computerized machines will have something like this.

It needs it's plug put inside a spot where you can't see, but it went in and the machine 'jumped' so I guess it was in the correct place.

Measure your button. In millimeters please. This white button is about 25 mm.
(aka 1inch).
New machine is on the metric bandwagon.




You will need to line up the red arrow on the white foot with the cut-out notch on the buttonhole slider.
Follow your manual's directions.
In this case, the buttonhole starts by going backwards in a tiny zigzag and then makes a cloesly-spaced wider zigzag over the stabilizing line.

{{So it is important to follow my mom's instructions by making a sample first!}}

Here is my machine making that tiny zigzag backwards.
The machine is set for operation #32 - buttonhole, pre-set width at 4.0 and 0.5 for tightness (length always confuses me).


Ta-Da!    -- a 4.0mm wide one-step buttonhole.
Kinda scrawny.


Here's one that might be the number one reason for me buying this machine. . .  9mm wide.
Bit beefier.


Watch out for my double buttonhole 'movie'. Holding the camera (smartypants phone), watching machine and pressing buttons did not mix well at about mid-time through.



Here's my sampler.
From right to left:
*4mm wide single.
*9mm wide single
*button covering boo-boo double
*9mm double
*9mm rounded-end buttonhole.

I can see from the fabric that a bit of stabilizer/interfacing scrap is needed to keep the fabric from being grabbed.

Most sliders have notches at either end for adding a cord to zigzag over to help stabilize the buttonhole. I usually grab a long double strand of thread and loop around notch at back end and line the threads up under front notch. When buttonhole is done, you pull the strands tight and knot off.


***The four-step is down one side, bar tack at end, up the other side, bar tack the end. Nothing special but you did have to watch the length of those sides.
My mom's old singer had a buttonholer attachment. You selected the cam that fit your button, whether it was a regular buttonhole or  a key-hole buttonhole. The cam in the buttonhole did the buttonhole in one-step. Very easy to go 'round twice too.