The Ultimate Guide to Hand Sewing Buttonholes

Hand stitched buttonholes are a staple of historical garments (and modern tailoring). It can be difficult to know what supplies to use or how to handle common problems, so today we're covering not only the basics like buttonhole stitch, but how to deal with a broken thread, cording, different shapes, different thread weights, and more!

Thread Sources- the brands being sold by these companies are often internationally available

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00:00 Introduction
02:04 Antiques
03:16 Threads
08:36 Basics
23:25 Potential Problems
27:44 Corded
32:11 Linen
33:56 Closed

[SilverDawnArrow]

When I was briefly in tailoring school we were shown a video of a woman at one of the Saville Row tailors whose one job was to do the buttonholes, and it was scary how fast she produced a perfect buttonhole

[saramcintyre]

This is the best buttonhole tutorial I've come across in the past 3 years. Thank you so much for your clear instructions and visuals. I love your work!

[Siansonea]

I use a flatiron (for hair) to iron thread, so that it doesn't have kinks and bends and bumps. Really helps with sewing, and the flatiron is great for other similar sewing/pressing tasks.

[beeticket]

It was so incredibly helpful that you chose to film this from a perspective where I can easily imagine your hands as mine. It aids immensely with the orientation and direction of stitching. When sewists film things from the opposite perspective, my brain has a hard time reorienting and my stitches never turn out correctly.
I also appreciated all the helpful tips and tricks, like anchoring the thread without knots. I have never actually seen it done like that before despite all my years of sewing, so definitely going to adopt that.
Really appreciate this one Nicole, thank you. <3

[elisabethm]

Thank you for introducing the large flat loop stitch. Decades ago my mother, who was English girls’ school trained, taught me the loop around the needle technique. While her buttonholes were enviously impeccable, mine were never satisfactory. II now realize that I would mix up the loop direction and also be less consistent than she was in the angle of pull. Your excellent tutorial makes me actually believe that my hope for a decently finished closure is still in reach. ❤

[mayalynn]

Thanks, yt for actually alerting me right away when this most excellent and relevant content was uploaded. 😂 I'm so excited for this, thank you!

[rodeffercircus]

I grew up on the little house on the Prarie books. And any time I was frustrated, my da told me to remember that practicing buttonholes would make me better and quicker, and it was the same with anything. I'm in my mid 40s, and hand sew more often than not, cos... sewing machines take space and electricity mostly. And.... just like figuring out maths, and spelling, I buttonhole a lot. This tutorial is fantastic, and I am always gleeful to see old skills kept alive!!! Keep being amazing, keep history alive. :) just wanted to tell you that you are awesome :)

[KarlEchtermeyer]

Thank you for this explanation and demonstration. It instantly improved my button holes. I had inadvertently been producing a blanket stitch instead of the proper one and hadn’t understood why they looked wrong.

[debbiewilliams]

Blimey, who knew sewing button holes for half an hour would be so utterly fascinating!

[Koboldmensch]

THANK YOU! For my wedding dress, I'd need to sew like 10 button holes, and have never done this before. You are a godsend!

[peccantis]

My great-grandfather was one of the leading tailors in his time, he had customers from all over the country, and my grandmother so proud all her life of how she as a young lass had been allowed to sew buttonholes on these suits for very important sirs. She's already long gone, but I like to think this video will help me achieve buttonholes she would approve of.

[thatinsufferablenerd]

I am very slowly learning to sew, but I have been knitting for 15 years. It's so funny to me that buttonhole stitches look exactly like a cast on row!

[piccalillipit]

*I AM TERRIBLE* at hand-stitched button holes - and I have practiced and practiced.

They have gone from looking like a spider smashed with a hammer on the fabric to the dizzy heights of "a bad buttonhole", but they are still terrible. I will be saving this to my "sewing" file for when I come to my NEXT button hole

[Caldella]

Watching this video now _and_ saving it for later. I have a couple projects that involve buttonhole/eyelet hand sewing, and I have seriously struggled to get it right despite watching other tutorials. Even the part about thread type is usually a minute or two glossing over it. This one is so much more in depth!

[ChocoBananaCh]

Thank you for the tutorial! I hope you'd do more tailoring 101 videos (still hoping that you'd do more fabrics 101 videos for semi-synthetic/rayon & full-on synthetic fibers)

[Noel.Chmielowiec]

I cannot express my gratitude for this video. I watched it and realised that for my whole life I've done buttonholes with a wrong stitch. I wonder why it never looked right 😂 I need more hand sewing lessons with professor Nicole, I will be manifesting them.

[theoriginalnik]

I spent a really long time hating buttonholes because they always looked terrible. I even learned how to do bound/welted buttonholes to avoid hand stitching them (which is also quite an endeavor tbh). Didn’t have a machine that did buttonholes. Years of hating and avoiding buttons.

Then I… learned that I was stitching them backwards. I like them now. They look great. 😂

[Baddylongway]

I know these videos recieve less attention than some of your other works so it is important for me to press that I really appreciate them. The throughness and grounding in actually explaining *why* you might want to do something a certain way is very helpful.

[meena]

Nicole this is just in time for one of my summer projects! I was literally just about to look up how to do a buttonhole by hand as I have tried and failed several times with my machine 😅
This is a godsend! Thank you

[brigittronrud]

Buttonholes have been the bane of my sewing life, and without a machine I have no choice but to sew them by hand. This has given me the confidence I need to not avoid them so much in future, and I'll definitely come back to rewatch for a refresher! Thank you so much!