So, yeah, there are other button-sewing sites out there. I found a couple of them via Google but was a bit unhappy with the photographs that they used and decided to add another How-To to the interwebs. The pictures still aren’t quite what I had wanted so I’ll update them soon but I think the better thread-fabric contrast and a few more intermediate steps shown is helpful and what I would have liked to have seen when I did my research.

To note is that this isn’t exactly what documentation (Chaucer works as documentation, right?) shows, but it’s pretty close and gives the same look with slightly less finagling in my experience.

I demonstrate this in a cotton muslin but have been making my buttons in 5.3 ounce linen. In fact, I used a scrap of that linen as a background for the photographs since it is oh so pretty. Thicker material makes it a bit harder to pull the material tight in the pursing steps but patience will teach you how hard you can pull thread and when you need to add a few more rounds of stitches to help pull it together. The black thread I used was also pretty light and tended to want to break even with this material. Patience, patience, patience. And if you snap the thread, you can just re-knot the thread and resume (I secretly did that 2 times while doing the pictures). On to the craftiness…
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