On Buttonholes, Blue Shirts, and Vintage Shoe Shine Kits

Let's talk buttonholes for a bit, shall we?

I think Jonathan Embroidery is a great resource, especially for garments that are tricky to fit under a standard vintage Singer or Greist buttonhole attachment, or for a garment you're afraid you'll ruin for one reason or another.



Every buttonhole is going to have some stray threads that will need to be trimmed -- it's a combination of the thread from the shirting and the interfacing.  Over time, these threads disappear.

Up top is the buttonhole I had made at Jonathan Embroidery.  Below are buttonholes I've made with my Singer buttonholer(s).  As you can see, they're slightly oval.  If your machine does a buttonhole anchored by satin stitches at either end, your buttonhole may look more like the one from Jonathan Embroidery, i.e, rectangular.  







I think for a cotton shirt, a home buttonholer is all you need.  (I demonstrate my favorite vintage Singer buttonholer here.)

Here's Michael in the completed blue cotton/poly shirt I made on Thursday.  He wore it to the opera last night.  I stayed home and watched a creepy Sixties Japanese film, The Face of Another.  If you liked Eyes Without a Face, this film is for you.





And here I am.  Not my favorite shirt but it's a good color for us both.







It felt like spring at the flea market this morning.  (You start seeing more sewing machines when the weather improves for some reason.)





I got seven CD's for a dollar each -- a songbird treasure trove!



I also picked up this old shoe shine kit.  I needed new shoelaces for my desert boots, and the perfect ones were inside the box.  I ended up buying the whole thing.





I love my Clark's desert boots, but the laces wore out in a month -- pathetic.







Do they even make shoelaces in the USA anymore?







So much other fun stuff in this box!









I almost always come home from the flea market feeling like 90% of the stuff manufactured today is crap.  (Actually, the feeling is rage.)  But what can you do -- other than frequent flea markets?

Sew.

Have a great day, everybody, and keep on sewing!

Some things HAVE gotten better -- hot chocolate this morning!