Blog: Sewing On A Button

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Last week I had one of those experiences that only come around a few times in a lifetime, when your entire WORLD is turned upside down and you suddenly realise that everything you thought you knew was WRONG. On this occasion it came about due to me sewing on a button.

Now, back in the dark distant days of my BATCHELORHOOD I would have occasion to sew buttons on myself, and it would always be DISASTROUS. To start with it would take me approx 3 hours to thread the flipping needle, then the thread would keep falling out halfway through and I'd have to start again, then I'd do it really messily, and after about 17 seconds of use the button would fall off again anyway. It was AWFUL.

In latter days The Eye In My Needle has very kindly done this for me, which has been MUCH better (for me anyway), but last week she suggested I have a go at it myself, suggesting I watch a YouTube video to work it out. My days of desperate solitude are SO long ago now that we didn't even HAVE YouTube videos then, so this seemed like a good idea and, armed with needle and thread, I sat down to have a go.

OH MY GOOD GOLLY! It was ASTOUNDING! I started watching one video which STRAIGHT AWAY blew my tiny mind by saying that a) you basically doubled the thread and b) tied a KNOT in the end before you started, so that it wouldn't fall out when you were sewing it in. WHAT THE ACTUAL?!? But of COURSE that's what you do! I instantly flashed back to my years of wondering how on earth this was supposed to work, and trying to tie knots INTO shirts and so on, but in a blinding flash I had received this rapturous information. ENCROYABLE!

The video then said "Once you've threaded the needle..." so then I had to go and look at ANOTHER video to see if there was an easier way than spending an entire evening SQUINTING MALEVOLENTLY at a piece of thread with my tongue stuck out. Of COURSE there was - firstly you SNIP it at 45 degrees so the end is POINTY, you do NOT lick it, and then you hold the THREAD in your right hand and guide it towards the needle, not the other way around. It was a good job I was sitting down at this point ELSE I would surely have fainted due to BRANE overload.

After that we got into the whole business of the sewing itself which GOOD LORD was packed full of information about how you actually DO it, and the running the string around the thread under the button three times, and THEN the whole business of tying it off at the end and... well, as you can imagine, it was a whole WORLD of new information, and I am happy to say that now, almost a week post-sewing, the button is still in place. I feel like I want to go out and find THE INCREDIBLE HULK or JOHN OTWAY now and offer to sew THEIR buttons back on for them!

posted 15/9/2020 by MJ Hibbett

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