How to Sew a Buttonhole With Your Machine, Step by Step

A buttonhole is the first thing you sew that looks like it came from a shop. It is also the step most new sewists put off for months, because it happens at the very end of a project, on fabric you have already spent hours on, and it involves deliberately cutting a hole in your own work. That fear is reasonable. The fix is not courage — it is doing the whole thing twice, once on a scrap and once for real.

Your machine does almost all of the work here. What you are actually learning is:

• how to prepare the fabric so the hole survives being used,
• how to tell the machine where the buttonhole starts and stops,
• how to open it without slicing through the end.

This sits in Level 2 of The Pattern — Stitcher — right alongside sewing a button on by hand, which is the other half of the same job.

What a machine buttonhole actually is

Strip away the branding and a buttonhole is four things stitched in sequence:

1. A dense line of narrow zigzag down one side.
2. A wider bar of stitching across the end.
3. A second dense line back up the other side.
4. A second bar across the top.

The two lines are called the beads or legs; the ends are called the bar tacks. The gap between the two legs is the bit you cut open.

One-step versus four-step buttonholes

Most machines sold today do one-step buttonholes. Most machines inherited from a relative do four-step. Both make a perfectly good buttonhole.

One-step, in a bit more detail

You put your actual button into a sliding cradle at the back of the buttonhole foot. The cradle sets the length. Because the foot, not your hand, is measuring, every buttonhole on the garment matches. Listings for machines like the Brother CS5055 describe this as a one-step auto-size buttonhole, and some computerized models offer several shapes of it.

Four-step, in a bit more detail

The machine does not know how long the buttonhole should be — you do. It is slower, but nothing about the result is worse.

Which one do you have?

Look at the buttonhole foot in your accessory box.

• A long, clear foot with a sliding measuring cradle at the back means one-step.
• A short foot with two grooves underneath, plus a dial marked with four little diagrams on the machine, means four-step.

Both live in the same drawer as the rest of your presser feet.

Step 1: interface, always

A buttonhole is a hole in a piece of cloth that a button will be dragged through several thousand times.

• Woven fabric on its own will fray and stretch out.
• Knit fabric will curl and swallow the stitching whole.

Before you sew, there should be a layer of interfacing or stabilizer between the fabric layers where the buttonholes will go. On a shirt placket or a waistband, that is usually already built into the pattern.

If you are adding buttonholes to something that has none — a cushion cover, a refashioned shirt, a bag flap — fuse a strip of lightweight interfacing across the whole button band rather than a patch under each hole, so the band behaves the same all the way down.

Step 2: mark, and mark on the right side

Mark the start and end of each buttonhole with tailor's chalk, a washable marker or a line of hand basting. Mark on the right side of the fabric, because that is the side facing you as you sew.

Two rules that save re-dos:

• Horizontal buttonholes go on waistbands and anywhere the garment pulls sideways; the button settles at the end nearest the garment edge.
• Vertical buttonholes go down a narrow shirt placket, centred on the band.

How long should it be?

Buttonhole length is the button's diameter plus its thickness, plus a couple of millimetres of ease.

• A flat button needs barely any extra.
• A domed or shanked button needs noticeably more.
• A one-step foot works this out for you as long as the button is sitting properly in the cradle.

Step 3: test on the same layers, every time

This is the rule that matters more than any other on this page, and it is the one people skip when they are nearly finished and want to be done.

Your test scrap must be the same fabric, the same number of layers, and the same interfacing as the real thing. A buttonhole tested on one layer of quilting cotton tells you nothing about how it will behave on three layers of denim plus interfacing:

• The machine feeds thicker stacks differently.
• The stitch density changes.
• A one-step foot that glides on two layers can stall on four.

Then run the test properly:

1. Sew the test buttonhole.
2. Cut it open.
3. Push the actual button through it.
4. If the button fights, lengthen it. If the button slips through under its own weight, shorten it.

Only then move to the garment. While you are testing, check the thread too — all-purpose polyester in a colour matched to the fabric is the default, and a fresh needle keeps the dense stitching from skipping. See thread and machine needles if you are restocking.

Step 4: sewing the buttonhole

One-step:

1. Snap on the buttonhole foot and open the cradle at the back. Drop your button in and slide the cradle closed against it.
2. Select the buttonhole stitch. On a computerized machine it usually has its own button or menu entry.
3. Pull the buttonhole lever down as far as it goes, behind the needle. If your buttonholes come out as one endless leg that never turns the corner, this lever is the reason — the machine cannot sense the foot's position without it.
4. Position the fabric so the needle enters at your start mark, lower the foot, and sew at a steady medium speed until the machine stops on its own.

Four-step:

1. Snap on the buttonhole foot and set the dial to step 1.
2. Sew the first leg down to your end mark and stop with the needle down.
3. Turn to step 2 and sew the bar tack — usually four to six stitches, enough to close the width.
4. Step 3 sews the second leg back up. Watch your first leg, not the needle, and stop level with where you began.
5. Step 4 sews the closing bar tack. Count the same number of stitches as the first.

Either way, finish by pulling the threads to the back and knotting or backstitching a couple of stitches into the bar tack.

Step 5: cutting it open without ruining it

1. Push a pin through the fabric just inside each bar tack, at right angles to the buttonhole. Those two pins are stops — when the blade reaches one, it cannot go further.
2. Work a seam ripper into the middle of the gap and push it toward one pin.
3. Turn the fabric and push toward the other.

Cutting from the middle outward, rather than from one end, means a slip lands in the middle of the hole instead of through the bar tack. If the fabric frays as you cut, a dot of fray sealant along the cut edge, left to dry before you push the button through, keeps it stable.

When it goes wrong

Wonky first buttonholes are normal. Nobody looks at the fifth button on a shirt. Sew five in a row on a scrap and the sixth will look like it belongs on something you bought.