After twenty years of blogging about sewing, you’d think I’d have mastered the humble buttonhole. Reader, I have not. My sewing machine and I have an understanding: I pretend I don’t need to make buttonholes often, and it pretends not to have that function when I do.
There was the Great Coat Disaster of 2019 where I made eleven – yes, eleven – attempts at the same buttonhole before giving up and hand-sewing the darn thing. My followers loved that post more than any perfect tutorial I’d ever shared. Because here’s the secret: people don’t connect with perfection. They connect with the struggle, the frustration, and that glorious moment when you say “screw it” and reach for the hand-sewing needle.
These days I consider a buttonhole successful if:
- It actually fits the button
- It doesn’t look like a small animal chewed it
- I didn’t cry while making it
That’s my version of sewing success.
