It’s not that there has been no sewing around here, it is
just that the sewing isn’t really blog-worthy, or interesting to anyone who can
sew on a button. In fact, that is
precisely what I have been doing, at least in part…sewing on buttons.

Somehow we had a little button popping festival around here
lately and mending was in order. Not my
favorite task mind you, I would much rather be creating something new, but,
well old garments are old friends as well and I can’t resign them to the trash
or the consignment bin (which wouldn’t take them sans buttons anyway) without
offering up a little repair and restoration.

Of course sewing on a button isn’t always a question of
merely sewing on a button. For example
the collar button came off of my DH’s favorite red and white checked shirt. It
is not a new shirt, but then favorite shirts rarely are, by the time they are
elevated to favorite status, all the previous favorites have pretty much fallen
by the wayside. As a result the shirt is
a little worn around the edges, like my DH, and like me in fact. I like to think we all get better with age,
but truthfully, like shirts, we also get a little worn.

Back to the shirt, the button fell off not because it wasn’t
sewn on beautifully. All the threads
were attached. The button fell off
because it has pulled through the fabric which has gotten a little worn and
frayed in that area from years of pressure from buttoning those button-down
collars. It would be nice if shirts came
with little bits of extra fabric along with the extra buttons to facilitate an
invisible patch, but I harbor no hopes that this might happen. In fact I believe it is increasingly
unlikely.

And so I search high and low for a likely candidate. This shirting is very thin, everything I find
is too heavy, or, if it is thin, it is too flimsy; the next button will also
just pull right through, even with a layer of fusible interfacing between the shirt
and the new inside patch. Finally I find
it, a selvedge piece off an old white sheet that I have been using for muslins
of late, light but strong.. A little
interfacing is fused behind the hole in the fabric, the patch is applied on the
inside of the shirt and lovingly sewn down with tiny little stitches, and,
finally, the button is attached.

I don’t suppose you want to hear about hemming jeans do you?