Hand Embellished Clothing : Upcycle Your Clothing With Covered Buttons

1. Introduction: If you have an interest in personalizing or upsizing your garments, then I'm pleased to be able to offer you this course on making covered buttons. In this class, I'll be showing you how to create covered buttons to express your unique, creative style without the need to purchase a commercial covered button kit. This class is suitable for all levels. No experience is necessary. Everything is broken down into easy steps that anyone can follow. This is the first class in a series I'll be presenting on easy clothing embellishments. Hello, I'm Michelle. I'm a multimedia artist with a love of watercolor, fine line illustration, textiles and stitching. Over the last few years, I've become increasingly aware of the fashion industry's impact on our environment. I was shocked to discover that in 2024, the fast fashion industry is estimated to produce a staggering 92 million tons of landfill waste annually. Not only that, it's also responsible for creating approximately 10% of global carbon emissions annually. These figures were the inspiration for creating this class and the series of classes to follow. Each of us has the power to make a change and minimize our environmental impact. Choosing to create beautiful embellishments for our garments. We can extend their life and keep them out of landfill. Upcycling not only sparks creativity, but also increases sustainability. It's really a win win as we end up with unique personalized garments, and we also get to save some of our hard earned money. I hope you'll come along and join me taking this first step in a journey to reduce your impact on the environment. Indeed, I hope you'll look out for other classes in this series where we'll continue to explore how we can use simple handmade embellishments to extend the lives of our garments. Are you ready to create stunning coed buttons? Then what are you waiting for? Let's go grab our supplies and get started. 2. Supplies: The first thing to start with would be the blank that you're going to cover. Now, there's a couple of things you can use for this. You can use plastic ones. It doesn't matter whether they have two holes or four holes or whether they have a ridge around the edge. You can use them upside down or you can use them that way up. If you don't want that little lip in there, you can pad it out with a little bit of felt or some extra fabric. The other thing that you can use for buttons are these wooden discs. These ones are teddy or doll joints that I've bought from the craft store at some point in time. The only thing you need to worry about is how rough they are around the edges, and I usually just smooth them a bit with either a bit of sandpaper or a nail file emery board. And you can pad them with a bit of felt if you like a more padded button. This one is a shank button. Shank really just refers to a little bit on the back that juts out and you stitch through to attach a button to the garment. And if that's the type of buttons you have, I'm going to show you how you can cover those, as well. Old discards. You don't have to buy them. I keep all my buttons off any garments that I throw out, and I store them in different color ways. You can use mismatch buttons as long as they're the same size. And that's where the ruler comes in. You measure your button size and make sure that they all match. The other thing to use the ruler for is measuring when we work out our fabric. That we need to cover the button with, you're going to need some scissors, a little bit of felt if you wish to cover the backs of your buttons to make them neater, or if you want to pad out your plastic buttons to give them more of a dome shape. Some thread. Use a matching thread. Make sure your thread is a good, strong sewing thread. I have here polycottons, and when I'm stitching, I double them up for strength. You'll need a sewing needle. It doesn't matter what type of needle, just something with a decent eye that you can thread your thread through without any issues. You're going to need some fabric to cover your buttons with. I've chosen this for my buttons because I'm covering buttons for a white linen shirt. This is old napery that I have picked up from the second hand store. And I plan on using the little bits of embroidery to cover my buttons with. These are all hand embroidered, and it's a shame not to give them a second life. The fabric is a little stained, so I have to work around the stains, but I've got enough of these napkins to be able to cut out pieces to cover my buttons with. So that's going to be what I'm working on, as well as some of this. This is a cotton quilting fabric, and it's a scrap, left off other projects. I plan on using these buttons for a pale blue chambray shirt. When you're choosing fabrics for covering buttons, you can go plain, but I sometimes like to make the buttons a feature, so I look for prints that can be used or things like the napery with the embroidery on or geometric type prints or bright bold prints. To use this fabric, I have a couple of choices here, probably three choices just looking at it. If I was covering the size of button, I could use the roses. I would just find a spot where I could have the rose on the button and cut according to that. I could actually just use the leaf part of the design if I wanted to. Or I could go for this side here where there are rose buds and stripes. We're also going to need something to mark your fabric with. Choose something that will show up so you can see it because we're going to measure and mark out cutting lines for our circle shapes to cover our buttons with. You could use just an ordinary felt tip marker, just a lead pencil. Proper fabric marker or a fabric pencil as long as you can see the line that you're going to be cutting. 3. The Project: The project for the class is really simple. I’d just like you to upload some photos of any buttons you make during class. You might like to include the buttons attached to a garment or used in a craft project. I'm really keen to see what you create. To upload your pictures, just look for the projects tab underneath The video player on the browser version of Skill Share. Navigate to the project page. And you'll see in the right hand tab, there's a menu that has the button to click to upload project and just follow the instructions. It's really simple. 4. Tips: When you're stitching through your covered buttons, you get them to a point where you've pulled all of the gathering up. It can be difficult to push the needle through the fabric when you're stitching them onto a garment or when you're finishing off that last little bit of stitching. One of the things you can do is use a thimble if you have one to push the needle in. Just make sure it's not facing into your flesh, because it might suddenly move and you'll hurt yourself. Get it moving, and then you'll grip it and pull it through. Another thing you can do is find a tough surface that you can push on the bottom of your needle with gently. Sometimes you can use the flat of the scissors. I sometimes use a coaster. I wouldn't recommend you push it onto any of your furnishings that you don't want damaged because it can make a hole in tabletops or arms of chairs. So just like that, I push down on it. If you have a thimble, use it. If you don't have a thimble, you can use the flat edge of your scissors or a drinks coaster. When you're choosing fabrics to cover your buttons with, look for something that has a tighter weave. These are ideal. These are little pieces of quilting cotton. And they have a very tight weave, so they don't fray as much as an open weaved fabric. If I was to choose evening fabric, I'd have to handle them very carefully because they will fray once they're cut. When you're handling a looser weave fabric, you have to do it very carefully because we're stitching around close to the edge, and we're handling the fabric, it will be inclined to fray along the edges, and it might fray in past your stitching. There's a couple of things you can do for that. The first one is to allow extra fabric while you're stitching, and then you can cut it away later. The other thing is to use a product called Fray Stopper. This is fray stop, and it's like a very liquid glue. You can pick it up at any haberdashery sewing fabric store, usually, and it comes out from a small nozzle in the end of the bottle and you just drizzle it along the cut edge of the fabric. That will help minimize fraying if you have a looser weave fabric or a evening shear type fabric that you want to use to cover buttons with. The other thing to look for when you're choosing your fabrics is scraps that have many different designs on because you could get many different styles of buttons from something like this fabric. You could use this area to make some leaf buttons. You could use the rose motif. This flower motif, if you were making one big decorative button, this area to get these three little flowers in fabrics that have a lot of design elements on them are very good for covered buttons. The other thing to think about is using recycled fabric. Any garment that I'm disposing of that's not going to go to a second hand shop, goodwill Thrift or opportunity shop, I dismantle. I save all of the buttons, closures, and zippers to recycle into other projects. And I also go through the garment and cut out any pieces of fabric that still have life left in them that I can use for other projects. Sometimes I use those fabrics for covered buttons. It's something to keep in mind and will help you build a small stash of reusable fabrics, buttons, and zippers for future use. If you're going to be covering buttons for a garment like this one that has buttonholes, if this didn't already have its buttons and you wanted to cover some buttons to put on it, you would measure your buttonhole to begin with. So you just measure from the opening to the other opening edge, it will tell you how big your button is, and then you're either going to purchase some buttons to fit that and they just need to be cheap, flat plastic, or you will go through your button supply and match however many you need to that size. If you have a garment that already has the buttons attached and you're planning on covering them, just something to be aware of. Once you cover the button, it adds a little bit to the diameter of the button, so you need to have the button hole. Slightly looser than the button that's already on there to make sure that you can actually get your button through the hole. The last tip I have for you is when we get to the stage where we are measuring our button and cutting out our fabric to cover it with. Once you have the first button measured and the circle cut ready, if you're covering several buttons of the same size, you can then use the first circle you've cut as a template to cut the rest of your fabric. That way, it saves you time. You don't have to remeasure the button and remark prior to cutting each time. 5. Running Stitch : I'm going to show you how to do the running stitch. This is the stitch we'll use to gather up the circles that we cut to cover our buttons with. You just need a threaded needle with a knot in one end of the thread. When we're doing our button circles, we'll have a double thread. But while I show you this, I've only got a single thread. The running stitch is very simple. It's just taking little tiny bites of the fabric, working your needle forward, and it's a rocking motion going through from the wrong side of the fabric, taking a small stitch. If I'm using a single thread, I take a small back stitch just to secure, even though I have a knot, because when you're gathering with a running stitch, you'll put tension on it, and you don't want it to pull out because you'll have to start again. And now we just simply take a small stitch forward, take your needle through to the back in a rocking motion, bring it back up to the front to the back, to the front, and you thread on as many stitches as you would like. So you can see there I've got stitches threaded on, and then you take your needle forward through. I like to use a small stitch when I'm doing the bottom covers. If you take too big a stitch, you end up with large pleats around the edges of your buttons that you're covering, and it can be time consuming to try and get them out. Again, going down from the top, take a little bite in the fabric, come up with a little bite of fabric. So it's the rocking motion down, up, down. Up, down and back up. And I usually take about that many, about four stitches. I find it sufficient on the needle at any one time. And so once you get to the end of your row, you can then pull your thread, and the fabric gathers up. And that's what we need to be able to do to cover our buttons trying to keep your stitches as uniform as you can. Because I'm using it as a gathering stitch, I'm not going to tie it off because I'm going to pull up on it. 6. Covering Buttons Part 1: These buttons are for my upcycled linen garment, I want to use these little daisy flowers. So I'm going to position my button as centrally as I can over those flowers. On the reverse side of your fabric, if you have a motif for a design you want to have on the front of the button, then centre it where you want it to be. And using your marking pencil, make some marks around your button. You don't have to go completely around just enough so that you can see the size of your button and the position. Make sure you can see your marks and double check that your motif is centralized. Then you're going to measure your button from the center to the outside edge because we're going to add that measurement from the line, the outside edge of the line we've drawn further out. And that will be your fabric that will cover the back section of your button. So with my ruler, the easiest way is to put your button on the top and measure the size. Mine is around about 21 millimeters, So half of 22.5, that will be 11 millimeters. So I want to add 11 millimeters around the outside edge of the circle I've drawn on here. I line my ruler up with the edge of the circle. Then I just go around and make some little marks and draw in the cutting line. And now that I have those marks on there, I'm just going to draw between those lines and join them up. It does not have to be a perfectly round circle. And then with my scissors, I'm going to cut my circle out. So there's my little bit of a wonky circle, and I might just go around and straighten it up just a little bit. Now I'm going to have to undo these bits of embroidery on here so that I can cover my button. In the meantime, I'm going to mark out a button for my shirt. Pick the rose that I like. This one here. What I'm going to do is cut away the excess so that I only have a small piece of fabric to work with. I can see the design through it, so it's easy to center it. If you're covering a button that you would like to show a particular motif on, but you can't see through to the other side for marking where to position your button. Then you'll have to work from the right side of the fabric. There's a couple of ways you can mark the fabric. One is to use a water erasable fabric marking pen, but you must test first because sometimes things that say they erase don't. They leave permanent marks. I have heard people use friction pens, but you would also have to test that to make sure that the pen actually disappears off your fabric. And the other way would be to use Tailor's chalk. You can buy it in a pencil form like this. You can also buy Tailor's chalk. In different colors for marking on different fabrics. There is a very simple option that you can use if your fabric will hold a crease, and that is to position your blank over the motif or design that you want to center on your button with the right side of the fabric up facing you. Hold it together with your fingers and then bring your fabric around and create, and I'll show you from the back, a crease line. So it's finger pressing, and you just go around and press that crease in as best you can around your button. Works best if you've ironed your fabric first, so there's no other creases there to confuse you when you have a look at it after you've done this. Now, this is a temporary crease that you've put in. You can just see it there to check your positioning. Pick up your button inside your fabric, hold it to the right side, and bring the fabric around so you can see if you're happy with the position. If you're not happy with the position, adjust it slightly on the back. You can run around with your pencil and marking your button so that you can see it before you lose the crease. Once you get the faint pencil line in, you can position your button against the crease line and you can just draw around it. 7. Covering Buttons Part 2: I'm going to use these wooden discs for the button. I had a choice with these discs. I could pad them out if I wanted a dome button, but I don't for this particular project. I've already been around the edges and smoothed them a little bit with an embry board, so it's ready to go. With my fabric marking pencil, I'll go around and mark around my button. These discs have a convenient hole in the center, so I can make a little mark in the center, and I can measure. From that mark to the outside edge of the button, I shall just go around the edge. And add that measurement as our cutting line. Now I've got my little dashes. I'll just join them up. And with my scissors, I'm just going to cut the excess fabric away. And now I'm going to thread my needle, push my needle onto my thread. Even the ends and make a not, I use a double strand because when you pull up, sometimes a single strand will break. So starting from the back and about an eighth of an inch or 3 millimeters from the edge, take a stitch and then take your needle back through your thread. You split your thread into two and pass your needle between the two threads to secure the thread. We're just going to run around using running stitch. Try not to make your stitches too large because it actually will make pleats along the edge of your button, which are hard to get rid of. The smaller the stitch size, the neater, the back of your button will be the easier it is to do the covering. Once you get around to the start again, take your final stitch through to the front of your fabric to the right side, then start to pull up and make a little bit of a cup shape. With your button blank, whatever you're using to cover, put it inside if you're like me and you're covering to show off a motif, get your motif where you want it. Hold it firmly in position and continue to pull up your thread. On the reverse side again, you need to anchor this thread that you've pulled up. So putting some tension on it, hold it with your thumb, that thread, and then take a couple of small securing stitches close to where the thread comes out to make sure it doesn't come undone on you. What I like to do is to take some stitches across where you're pulling all the edges in together in the center where the fabric meets. When I get to this stage, I have another look at my button from the front, and I also check the sides to make sure I haven't got huge pleats in it. We're going to work on making sure we have smooth edges, getting rid of some of these tiny little pleats. And the way to do that is what I call valley stitching. Where all of these pleats are, you have high part, which would be like a mountain. And then between, you have these what I call valleys. To pull in these little pleated bits, you need to take little stitches in the valleys. So what I do is take my needle into this area here where I can see a bit of a pleat. I'm going to go in there straight up, parallel with the valley and the mountain pleat, and then pull that area back down, put my thread back in. So you're only taking a small stitch there and take it across to the other side. And I'm going to take a stitch in here, which should be a valley, but it hasn't quite formed. I'm going to take a stitch across there underneath and then taking a small stitch there, I'm going to come back over this side, and I'm going to take a stitch in between these two pleats here in this valley. And what we're doing is we're pulling up all of these looser bits of fabric, making them tighter to eliminate the pleats. So another little stitch on top, back through to the other side, choose a spot to come out. There's a little pleat there I'd like to remove, so pulling it straight up, taking a small stitch on top of that valley coming across here, where there's a little bit of a lumpy bit happening. And I use my fingers to manipulate the fabric into position, pulling it across, taking that little stitch on the top. Moving across to the other side, there should be a valley in here, but the pleats gone a little crooked, so I'm going to take my needle up in there where there should be a valley and take that stitch on the top there, find a spot on the other side to come out, and you just keep working around your button. You keep checking the edges. What we want is all of those little creases or pleats on the side of the button to move around to the back part of the button where they won't be seen. I'm happy with the edges of this button now. It's all nice and smooth. What I want to do is bring some of this fabric down a little flatter. So what I'm going to do is work through the pleats from where I originally pulled up my thread, and I'm just going to go around following this circle around the middle till I get back to the beginning. I'm going to pull it all up again and end off. That will help me get a neater back on my button. You can actually put your needle through a few of these pleats at a time. And you can see that's much neater than it was before I started the second row of gathering back to where I started. And at this point, you have a look and see if you're not happy with your finish in the middle, you can take a few more stitches over the top if you like. I'm quite happy with that. I don't see any raw bits where it might fray. And so I'm just going to take a couple of little stitches here. One, backstitch, a second, but I'm taking my needle through that loop. Gives me a little bit of a knot to secure everything. Then I'm going to pass my needle back through the fabric and just come out over the other side. With a pair of scissors, I'm just going to push down against the button as I snip the thread, and that allows the thread to pop back inside, and there's the button finished, smooth on the front and around the edges, and neat on the back. When you come to attaching the button, we stitch through this fabric here on the back, this little bit of fabric where it's all gathered in. 8. Covering Buttons Part 3: To make a domed button, you need something to pad it out with. You can use toy stuffing. So polyester toy stuffing, you can use bits of leftover quilt wadding, whatever you have to hand, or you can use extra fabric or felt. Now, this might sound counterintuitive, but to create the dome on top, you are going to stack fabric, but you're going to start with the smaller piece at the bottom, a medium piece, and then a larger piece. That way, you get a smooth dome on the top. I'm going to do this big button. And I just need the felt to be the same size as the edge of the button. And I'm going to use a felt tip marker to mark this one. This won't be seen. It will be cut off. Using your button or your blank as a template, draw around it. What I do is cut a strip of my felt. And I fold it up. I know I'm going to need three pieces and cut off the excess. Just cut my layers through like that. Try not to stretch it like I just did. And then if your scissors are good enough, you can cut three at once, but if not, cut the top one and then use that as a template to cut around one at a time. Now I'm going to check it for size. I'm going to use the reverse side of the button, and that looks pretty good. So now I need to cut down these so that I have a large, a medium, and a small. Now, if I fold this and hold it against the button, line it up with the center. I'll be able to see how much I want to cut it in. And this is really just a guess, but I guess I'm going to cut it down just a little bit off the edge. And holding it in half like that, I'm just going to trim around it. Just cutting off a little bit from the outer edge, making it a little smaller, and that will be my medium size piece. And then finally, I want one smaller than this, so fold it, line it up again with the center. Doing the same again, just trimming down my little bit of padding, watching that I don't cut my fingers. It's not exactly a circle shape, but I can pull it a little bit till it is. So here's my stack of felt now. And if I put it onto the button that way, it will give me a little bit of padding. You can add more if you want more of a dome shape. Now, to attach it to the button, you can actually just put a little bit of glue on to hold them into place while you stitch, or you can just sip them inside the cup of your fabric as you pull up to cover the button. Now, one thing when you do this is you probably will need to leave a little extra fabric than the halfway measure added on. Because you've increased the size with this felt, it's a good idea to allow yourself a little extra fabric so that it will meet in the middle on the back. For this button, I've decided I'm going to use some of this elephant fabric. I like the orange elephant, I think. I'm just going to go around with my fabric marking pencil. Now, having a little bit of padding, I want to add just a little bit more fabric to make sure I get a good coverage on the back. This button measures 38 millimeters. So I want half of that, which is 20 millimeters just under. So I'm going to take it to the 20 millimeters, and I'm going to have a look at that after I've marked it out to see whether I think there's going to be enough fabric to pull around to the center back once I add the felt. Continue marking out here at 2 centimeters. Now, if I put that on there and I'm very close to the edge there, so I'm just going to use that as a way of checking where I get to. We need to cut these out. If you end up adding too much fabric, you can always cut off the excess before you actually stitch the button to the garment. So if you end up with a really big lumpy bit on the back, you can actually hack into it with your scissors and cut it back down. Just double checking. Everything looks good. Now, the same again, we need to put in our running stitch coming in a few millimeters, about an eighth of an inch from the edge. Take one stitch. So I'm working on the revers side of my fabric, and I'm locking that stitch there. And now I'm just going to work my way around the outside edge just in a bit with small running stitch. When you get to the end, take that last stitch up to the front of the fabric, to the right side. Now, I've got a bit of a cup happening here, so I’ve got somewhere to put my mound of felt, and I'll just position it so that it's fairly even, and then put my button in and holding it firmly together, begin the process of drawing up my thread. Right. Before I pull this all the way up, I just want to make sure my elephant is in the position where I want him. And there's a little bit of wiggle room there to move him around a bit. Pull up as tight as I can on that thread at the back. Now, this one's going to take a little bit of pulling up because I allowed extra fabric, and I've got pleats. So that's what happens if your stitches are too big or if you have extra fabric. But we know how to deal with those by taking valley stitches. So now I've got it all to the center at the back. I will take a few stitches to pull it all tight and hold it into position, slowly pulling it in. This should actually be a valley here, but it hasn't pulled up very well, so I'm about to encourage it where it should be by taking a valley Stitch. What to do if your thread breaks like mine just has. Well, the first thing to do is not to panic. Because you've taken so many stitches in there, it's probably going to hold. So I simply re thread my needle and start stitching straight over it. So I'm going to take through that center section and just poke my needle out up into the pleat a little. And not going to put too much attention on that just yet. I'm going to take a little stitch here and another one. And I'm going to go through the loop of that thread again just to pull it nice and firm, and now I'm going to go back to what I was doing, which is taking valley stitches. When you're checking on the right side, just encourage the sides around so that you can figure out which pleats you need to work on. As I go around, I'm targeting some of these little pleats that I see when I look at the button from the other side. So I'm looking for the valleys that correspond with those little pleats that are showing on the other side. I've left my thread very short. So I'm going to have to deal with that as best I can. And there's our nice domed elephant button. Being a little rough on the back, one of the things you can do to fix that is to put a piece of fabric around here and cover it. Now, you can use the same fabric that you covered the button with. You'll have to needle turn the edge as you go around, otherwise, you'll have a raw edge sitting there. Now, this fabric is not going to be really good for needle turning because it's a very open weave and it will fray. So I've decided I'll use a piece of felt. And so I'm going to measure around my button carefully because I don't want to mark my button. But I'm going to use the felt tipped marker, and I'm just going to stay away from the fabric and just draw my circle around. Being felt, I won't really have to worry about raw edges. I'm just going to make it slightly smaller than the size of the button. So that it doesn't show. On the reverse, just hold it there, and you can use either an overcast stitch, a hemming stitch, a ladder stitch, whatever you like, even a buttonhole stitch if you wanted, to secure that down. I'll just anchor my thread to the actual fabric that I've covered the button with. I take a couple of stitches and go through the loop, just to hold it to get started with, come up through my felt, and just take a little bite of fabric. It's a little tight because, obviously, I've pulled the fabric on the button tight, but it's doable. I'm just going to work my way around taking a little bite of the fabric on the button and a little bite of the felt. Being felt, you don't need to worry that it's going to fray. I'll take a little bite of the button fabric and come up through the felt, go back over and a little bite of the button fabric, and then bring my needle up through the felt all the way around to get back to where you started. And then I just take a couple of horizontal stitches next to the seam. One more with a loop to create the knot. Pull it up. Then I thread my needle back inside, come out anywhere in the felt. And then putting a little tension on that thread, push down with scissors and snip it and the thread gets buried back. And here we have our nice button all done with a nice soft dome on it, all neat and tidy on the back, and you have a spot on the back where you can stitch it. 9. Covering Buttons Part 4: I'm going to show you how to do the one with the shank, and we're doing the same again, taking small stitches again, about 3 millimeters or an eighth of an inch in from the edge of the fabric, and we're stitching on the wrong side of the fabric. Go all the way around. Bring your needle out on the right side of the fabric when you get right around, begin to make that cup shape carefully, especially if you have a fabric like mine which is going to fray. Pop your button in get it into the center and keep pulling up your thread. A little pleat in there that I'll have to work to get out. Once you get it pulled up, keeping tension on your thread. Take a couple of stitches to lock things in place, as we did before pulling. I'm just going to add a securing stitch there. I'm going to take it through the loop in the thread, and I'm going to pull it up, which will knot it. Now you can have a look and see how you went, and we're going to do the valley stitching. I'm bypassing the shank because I don't want to take up the space in there where my thread for stitching and attaching is going to be. Just keep working backwards and forwards until you get to the point where you're happy that you haven't got too many bumpy bits along the outside edge. This is a raised bit from the design in the fabric, so that's going to have to stay there. What I'm going to do now is to take some stitches around the fabric again through those plates that we already made when we did our initial circle stitching and just keep working. To make sure you've pulled it up nice and tight around the shank. The shank has almost disappeared in there, but I assure you it's still there and you can still stitch through it. I want to be able to find the shank when I come to stitching, so I push down as much as I can around it, taking a little stitch here to secure my thread and one more where I take my needle through the loop, bury my thread, bring it out over here, and cut it off, flush with the fabric so it pops back in and disappears. So there we have a button covered. With a shank in the back of it. The next one is going to be a flat button that we're going to cover. Working on the wrong side of the fabric, a few millimeters in from the edge, take one stitch where the knot is, put your thread and go through. Makes a nice, secure thread for when you pull up, now go around the outside edge a few millimeters to an eighth of an inch from the raw edge, taking small stitches all the way around. This is a fabric that frays so I just need to go gently. Take your needle out on the right side once you get all the way around. And then you can start to pull up your thread, place your button in the middle, pulling up. Before you get it too tight, make sure it's sitting where you want it to. And then pull up your thread, Center your design on your button. I'm just going to take my thread through and bring it to the other side. I've probably left a little too much fabric around this. But that's alright. We'll work with it. It's going to take a little extra stitching. There's two reasons for that. One is that I made the allowance a little bit too big for the button and the other thing is that these buttons are very slippery. So that's also something to be aware of. If you have buttons that are a little slippery, when you're trying to pull them up, the fabric will move quite a bit. Now, it's not a problem if you don't have a design that you want to center on your button. If I was just using a fabric like that, which didn't matter, the slipperiness is not a problem, but for this one where I want to try and get it in a certain position, it's made it a little difficult. So I'm putting in the extra stitches to make sure everything's nice and tight. Now, I'm going to start with the valley stitching. And I'm going to go through. Come up in that valley and take a stitch and keep working my way around until I'm happy. Now, I do have rather a large lumpy bit here, which I'm not too keen on, so I'm going to trim that down. The sharpest scissors you have is best for doing this. And you just keep trimming down, capturing as much as you can. With your scissor blades, you want to try and get it as flat as you can. Okay, that's a bit better. Now, I'll double check everything before I end off. It looks nice and smooth around the edges. Happy with that. My flowers slightly off center, which allowed me to have a little bit of the green showing. So now I just need to end off here. Taking the little backstitch. And another stitch, passing it through the loop of the thread. And then popping my thread underneath. And I'm just going to cut it off as close as I can. And then I'm going to stitch a little felt circle on the back of this. And here we have the back of the button covered nicely. When you stitch it on, you'll be stitching through the little mound, and there's the front of the button with a little embroidery design on it. 10. Attaching Buttons: I'm going to show you how to sew the shank button onto some fabric. When you sew your buttons onto fabric, you will have two thicknesses of fabric and one of interfacing. So I have doubled up to simulate that with your fabric. Starting on the wrong side of the fabric, take a small stitch, I have a double thread with a knot in it, and I'm going to do what I have been doing and poke my needle back through the loop in the thread, and then I can cut off the excess. Now take your thread through to the right side of the fabric. To stitch this button on, I'm going to take my needle and find the hole in the shank and poke my needle through. You can see it there coming through the shank and then positioning where I want my button to sit, I will take my needle back down through my fabric so that the stitches have a little bit of fabric between them. And I don't completely tighten it straight away. I wait until I've got a few stitches in before I tighten the thread. It just makes it easy to get in there to work your needle backwards and forwards through the shank. You can tighten it a little bit, but I'm leaving mine a bit loose so you can see what I'm doing. And then back through the fabric to the bottom, keeping control of your thread so that it doesn't get knotted. And you want to take four to five double threaded stitches through the shank. When you have the number of stitches that you would like to secure your button, then you can begin to tighten the stitches. So I begin to pull up and then keep going until your button's sitting nice on your fabric, and I come back to the wrong side. And I take a couple of little stitches to make sure everything's nice and secure. And then I take one more and take my thread back through the loop to make that little knot and one more. Then if you're working with layers that you can open, you can poke your thread through and cut it off underneath. If not, I take it up to the top, take a little stitch through there. Cut it off where it's hidden under the button. And there you've got your button attached through the shank. Now, I'm going to show you how to attach this one that just has the little mound of fabric at the back for stitching through. Starting on the bottom of your fabric, take a little stitch where you want your button to be positioned. Go back through your loop and then bring your thread up to the front where you're going to attach the button. With your button in your hand, take a stitch through the back. Now, if you have a design on your button and you want your button to sit a certain way, so if this was my shirt, I'd like my roses to sit facing upwards, and I take particular attention of that when I'm stitching the first couple of stitches just so that I can keep it in the position that I want it to be in, I come through to the back of my fabric with my needle and take that stitch and then I go back through to the front. Of the fabric. Holding my button in position, go through the bulky part of the back of the button. This can get a little bit hard to sew because of all the fabric there. Sometimes a thimble will help to push your needle through. Once you've come through your button, go back down into the back, through to the bottom, take a little stitch, across. Coming up on the other side, take another stitch. Go through your button again. If you come out wider past some of the thick pleats, it's easier to push the needle through. Keep making sure that you've got your button facing in the right direction. Once you've come through the button, take your thread through to the back of the fabric and come up again where you're going to take another stitch through the back of the button, working back through to the other side. Once you've taken enough stitches that your button feels secure, it's about five or six stitches. I take my thread to the bottom. Come back across to the other side out underneath the button onto the front of the fabric. Then I like to make a few wraps around the base of the stitching there. It gives a little added strength so that when you're going through the button hole, the button hole is not rubbing right up against your stitches. There's a little barrier there with the thread that you've wrapped around. You put your thread around about four times, take your needle back through to the back and make your securing stitches on the back. Usually go across in the opposite direction to my stitches that I've worked, and then make one, make the loop. I usually do two of those to secure everything. Then take your thread through to the front, and you can take it through some of your stitching, if you like, or through the fabric, and then cut your thread close down at the base. And there's the second button sewn on. With these buttons that I have covered with embroidery, I'm going to stitch them directly onto the garment next. I have already attached two buttons to my blouse. And I'm going to attach this one up the top here. This is the one with the little felt backing on it. This shirt or blouse is easy to attach the buttons to because it has these snap fasteners here, I can see exactly where I want to attach my button, and I'm going to put it there like that. Just deciding which way I want my button to face. And I think I like it like that where I have a little bit of green flecks sitting down here, up here and to the side. I can see exactly where I want to attach my button. But I can always mark it with my marking pencil. When you come to stitch your buttons onto your garment, if you don't have, you know, an easy way of finding where you want to put them, the positioning for buttons is usually in between the placard, and you would just center it in the middle. So you could do that by measuring and marking and then measuring downwards as well and evenly spacing your buttons. If yourg Garment already has button holes in it and you're replacing other buttons with covered buttons, it's easy to work out the positioning. Where the buttonholes are, you just use a pin and mark in the center. Of the buttonhole. Then you would very carefully lift the side with the buttonhole in it over your pin so that the pin remains in the fabric underneath. And with your marking pencil, then you just come along. And if your pin was in the center, like here, you would just mark with your marking pencil where the pin is sitting. And you would go along and do that for every button hole. If for some reason, you have to work out the spacings yourself and you don't have buttonholes to guide you, then you position your button, your first button where you want it, like here, and you would then hold it, mark it with your finger, mark that spot. And then you would work out the distance measuring downwards, how far apart you want your buttons. Once you have decided how far apart you want your buttons, then with a ruler, you measure center of that button to where you want the center of the next button, make your mark on the fabric, and so on down the front of the garment. When you stitch your buttons onto a garment, you match your thread to the color of your garment. I'm going to use a blue thread for this so you can see it. I have a double strand with a knot in the end, as we've been doing for covering our buttons. Take a small stitch right over my mark. And as we've been doing, split your stitch with your needle and thread and bring it up so that it creates that nice, firm anchor point. Now, because my garment is linen and it's a fairly open weave, I'm going to take one more stitch in there before I start Attaching my button. So I want my button to face that way. So keeping that in mind, the first stitch, I'm going to be very careful that I get it into the position that I want. So on the back side of the button, I take a small bite through the felt it and bring my button down to where I want it, making sure it's held in place with your thumb. Then go through taking a small bite of fabric from your garment, going back through the fabric side underneath your button. And now I'm just going to take little stitches backwards and forwards until I've secured the button to the garment. Each time I take a stitch, I reposition my button so that it's facing the way I want it to. Now, it's up to you how many stitches you take. With a double thread, I like to take somewhere 5-10 stitches, especially if I'm stitching to a looser weave fabric, adds a little bit more security. That button's feeling very secure now, so I will make this my last stitch, bring it back through to the other side. And now what I like to do is run my thread, wrapping it around the base of where I've just stitched a few times. It creates a small space like having a shank on a button. I'm just going to end off the same way that we have been. Take a little stitch, take my thread through my loop. I just make sure everything's sitting where I want it and I will take my thread either back through to the back of the garment or you can take it inside the covering on the back of your button, then you're just going to snip that thread off. As close as you can to the fabric that you've come through so that it pops back inside out of the way. I'm very happy with the way they've come out. You might notice that I've used odd pieces. I think it makes it a little more interesting. 11. Ideas & Thank you: I wanted to show you a couple of coats of mine that were destined for goodwill before I got the idea to upcycle them. The first is my black trench coat, which I've had for many years. I was all set to put it in the bag for goodwill. When I realized I could upcycle it with covered buttons, I selected a fabric that had touches of red in it, but I focused on the daisies in the print, and I'm so pleased with the way it's come out. It's given the coat such a different look. The second coat is a boiled wool coat that I've had for a very long time, and it too was destined for goodwill. I was covering the buttons for the black coat, When I realized that the same fabric would match quite nicely with the red jacket. So I covered the buttons, and I focused more on the strawberry pattern for the buttons on the red coat. Now, the buttons on the red coat are oblong, but they still covered quite successfully. When I finished reattaching the buttons and looked at the coat, I then decided to attach two strips of the same fabric to the edge of the pockets by hand stitching them in place. And I'm so pleased with the end result. Such a simple thing as using the covered buttons creates a whole new look to a garment. I have here some fun things you can do with covered buttons other than stitching them to your garments. You can create little hair pins by attaching buttons to bobby pins or decorative hair slides, little combs. They're also fun attached to ponytail ties. And they make great little gifts as brooches. All you do is just stitch a brooch back onto your buttons. Another thing you can do with them is gift to friends who like to upcycle their garments or who like to sew their own garments by creating a series of buttons that match, attach them to a little piece of card just with a few tacking stitches. Then you can hand embellish your card, or you can put them on a strip. I've sold these at markets, and I've also sold the ones that are on strips of paper for people who like to do craft projects and sew their own garments or upcycle their garments. There's a couple of things I haven't got here that I also use covered buttons for. One is to make bookmarks, sew your little button to the top of the bookmark like that. Makes a nice personalized gift. The other thing I like to do with covered buttons is to attach them to small gift cards when I'm gift giving. And the button can be removed by the person receiving the gift, and it can be used for something else. I hope this has helped you see that there's more to covered buttons than just stitching them to garments. I'd really love to hear if you have any of your own unique ideas for using the buttons. If you're interested in buttons and would like to do some further reading, you may find a copy of this. This is quite an old book, but it's very cute. The button book by Diana Epstein, and it goes through buttons through history. It’s got some lovely pictures of different kinds of buttons and some information about the types of buttons that have been around through history. And there's also this book called The Button Maker by Sarah Beaman and it is full of techniques and projects to do with buttons. It has instructions on making buttons out of different types of materials woven, wooden, clay, shells, leather. It's a very interesting read. If you're interested in further information on making your own buttons, I hope you've enjoyed this class. This is the first in a series of classes that I'm going to add to my skill share catalog. The classes will be focused on sustainable fashion and upcycling items either thrifted or from your own wardrobe. We'll be looking at easy embellishments for your wardrobe and some easy alterations for garments. So keep your eye out for these classes as I upload them in the near future. I'm looking forward to seeing the buttons that you create so don't forget to upload photos of buttons that you cover following along with the class lessons. And in particular, if you attach them to garments or if you use them in craft projects. I'd really love to see what you do. All you need to do is in the browser version of Skill Share. Open the project tab. If you look to the right hand side, there's a menu there that has a button to click for uploading pictures of your projects. Click on the button and follow the instructions for uploading photos. You can also write something about your project in that area. If you enjoyed this class, I'd really appreciate if you would leave a review. It's very helpful for me to hear what you've enjoyed about a class or where you think I might be able to improve. So if you have the time, it only takes a few minutes to pop along to the review tab underneath the video section. Click on that, and there's a place there where you can write your thoughts on the class. Once again, thank you for taking the class, until next time.