Replacing Buttons - How to Mend Your Clothes While Self-Isolating Series: 5 Easy Stitch Fixes

If you’re lucky enough to stay at home during this pandemic, you may have some extra time on your hands. Did you go through your closet? Dig through your drawers? Find some clothes that you haven’t been wearing because they’re missing buttons or have holes? Learning how to mend your clothes can be a useful skill, and believe it or not, it can also be surprisingly fun!

I’m going to do my best to walk you through some basic garment mending. These are fun projects to get your wardrobe back in shape, and you can get creative with them or keep these repairs simple — depending on your interest level. Ultimately these projects can help keep your clothing wearable for longer (and out of landfills!), making them a major win no matter how far you take your designs.
Please note: clothing that has any amount of stretch should be washed and completely dry before repairs are made. Additionally, when in doubt, remember that there are tons of free resources online if you want further instruction or you’re in need of a particular repair isn’t mentioned here.
Now let’s get to sewing!

​How to Sew a Button

Sewing a button is one of those tasks that can seem daunting, but I promise it’s probably the easiest repair you can do! There are three main types of buttons: 4-holed, 2-holed, and shank. I’m going to walk you through the 2-holed, but 4-holed and shank follow the same idea and shouldn’t scare you off!

1) Firstly, do you have a replacement button? Is it the same one that fell off? If you don’t have that one, check if there’s an extra by looking along your clothing’s seams. If you can’t find one, check to see if you have a stash of buttons you cut off of hangtags when buying new clothes. 
Don’t have a matching button? You could always choose something similar, use a different one for a unique style, or buy enough matching buttons to replace them across the whole garment.
The same goes for thread! Decide whether you’re planning on matching the thread to what’s already there, if you want to switch it up, and if thread is even the right option. A hack my family uses to sew on pesky buttons that seem to always fall off (like on sports jackets and peacoats) is to sew them on with dental floss! (I’ve definitely Sharpied floss to be black before…)

2) See if you can find where the button had previously been attached. Take your threaded needle (with knot at the end!) and try to match it to one of the previous holes from the back of the fabric. Push the needle through so it comes out the front of the fabric, where the button should be. Thread it through the button and center the button properly as to where it should lie before taking your needle through the other hole and back down through the fabric to the other side. ​

3) Repeat this process of going up and through the fabric, and back down to secure your button, keeping your stitches tight. (If this was a 4-holed button, you would do this process in an “X” but looping one line first a few times (6-12) before switching to the other, approached from the back.)

4) Once you feel your button is secure, make sure your thread is on the back side. Take up a couple threads from the fabric with your needle, and before you pull your needle all the way through, wrap your thread around the needle a few times (at least 3). Continue pulling the needle through and you should have a knot!

This blog is an excerpt from a post that was originally written for and featured on Remake. Please support their work and get more resources from them here.