Button Bands

:

:Back when I made all of Dave's sports shirts, I found it much easier :to sew the buttons and buttonholes as soon as I could, then button the :shirt fronts together and thereafter treat the front as a unit.

:Of course, the collar button has to be sewn after the collar stand is :attached, but that means only one buttonhole has to be made while :wrassling the entire shirt around. (And I got out of doing it because :Dave never buttoned his collar button.)

:I wonder why fabrics-store.com are so insistent on this point. I do :have a theory as to why they insist on countless un-necessary :backtacks.

Factory sewn garments almost always have buttonholes sewn as the second last step. Buttons, installed to match the buttonholes, is the last. That way, any misalignment from side to side can be compenstated. That can be up-down, where one side is sewn higher than the other, or in-out, where center front isn't in the right place. Or both, or something else. Someone following a tutorial online probably could use that wiggle room, too.

When I sew shirts, I prefer to do the buttonholes next to last, buttons last. That way I can put a brand new needle in the machine for the buttonholes... they look so much better with a fresh needle than with one that's already sewn the rest of the shirt.

Because I tend to sew shirts in bunches, that needle that just made the buttonholes is then the one I use to sew the next shirt up to the buttonhole stage. So for X shirts, I use X+1 needles. So... spring is coming... I'd better get started on the next crop of shirts... ;-)