Should I , or should I not add buttons?

That is the question!!

The other day I saw Sewcalgal post that embroidershoppe had a sale, and especially on these retro birds– loved hers from the ME blog hop!

So I bought the set AND a breakfast set, which I’ll make later.

Of course I had to change the colors!! so I did a sample like this on Kona white!

I wanted to add it to a TOVA top shirt like this one I made a while ago.

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Here I laid out the samples on top of the shirt just to visually see how it would look

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I really wanted something for the inset of the front!

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I cut out all the pieces and started! at least the inset piece was not that big so if I made a mistake I’d cut another piece out!

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Looking good!

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I then embroidered 2 birds on the bottom of the shirt- minus the hem

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Now –oopsie- somehow it puckered the fabric a bit- I guess, the outline of the bird is a bit off- nothing I can do about it now and you really don’t notice it from far away….

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Here’s the front all sewn together- it’s just wrinkled because I didn’t iron it yet.

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Here’s the shirt all done! I love how it turned out!

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Now the front is very low, I usually wear a top underneath.

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I tried to pin it about 2” up and I can still easily pull it over my head, so I looked at some buttons, should I add those as dummy buttons? or make REAL button holes?- that kind of scares me more than the embroidery!

this way the embroidery will not be hidden so much either.

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what do you think?

– and did you notice the sleeves are longer?? I made them longer, after putting on the other top I added 5” which looked good when I wore it, now I think it’s a smidge too long, but nothing too bad, maybe 1/2”.

13 thoughts on “Should I , or should I not add buttons?”

  1. If your machine does good buttonholes it shouldn't scare you at all. Just practice a couple of times on scrap fabric first.

  2. Go for the buttons, buttonholes aren't that difficult to sew. You could always sew on snaps then and buttons to the front of the placket.

  3. Teresa in Music City

    If you can just sew on the buttons and not have to unbutton them, then just do that. Why bother with buttonholes you may not even use? Unless you want the look of the buttonhole behind the button – that would be the only reason to do that. I like using the buttons though, so your beautiful embroidery can be seen 🙂

  4. Go you can,buttonholes aren´t difficult.The first one is a little tricky and then is easy!!

  5. I vote for little delicate blue pearly buttons. Your embroidery is lovely and the blue birds sew sweet. Creative Stitching Bliss…

  6. Buttonholes aren't that bad but I agree with Teresa, if you're not going to use them why bother, just put the buttons on. Cute top!

  7. Very nice! Buttonholes are scary the first time, but easy. as others have suggested, just practice on a couple scraps. The buttons you have appear a tad big, but maybe it is just that the picture does not show the scale properly. You don't want buttons to compete with the pretty embroidery! small pearl buttons, maybe?

  8. I would use buttons, whether you make the button holes or not. I do think that blue buttons would look lovely on the top.

  9. Pat from Florida and Michigan

    Yes, smaller blue buttons would be better. Button holes are not hard. Just make a couple on scraps and you'll be over the phobia. With all you can do, buttonholes will be nothing.

  10. Bea ~ I don't remember which machine you have, but if it is like mine and does auto button holes then you have nothing to fear. I just taught my future DIL how to use that feature on my extra machine not long ago and she was thrilled at how easy it was and shocked too. She's now adding button holes to all sorts of things. LOLThe buttons you have laying on the shirt are to 'bulky' looking for the delicate designs you've used in my opinion. If you are never going to want to open that area up then you might consider stitching up that following the stitching already there to close it permanently. I have a few shirts that have that. In doing this option you will not take away from the delicate/dainty designs. If you want buttons then I would use a much smaller button to not distract from the designs. The outline being off (the 'registration')on your bird is not fixable now as you said. This can happen for a number of things from not hooping the fabric tight enough, or using the wrong stabilizer. It can also be caused by using the wrong needle at times. Most often the problem is going to be the wrong stabilizer being used for the fabric. I noticed some puckering on the flowers also so I'm guessing possibly the stabilizer could be the culprit. If you use more than one layer of stabilizer they should be layered in different directions in the hoop to provide support in all directions. I personally don't like to use tear away stabilizer, especially on fabrics which are on the thin side because it's too easy to pull while ripping and distort the stitches. I am not sure which you've used, but if you haven't tried it before, you might want to buy some no show mesh stabilizer. It's a nylon mesh so it's thin and won't affect the way your fabrics hang while wearing them, plus it feels soft against your skin on the inside of your clothing. No Show Mesh is great on clothing because it's thin, but it's very stable at the same time because of the way its made with support in both directions. Sorry, I know this got a lot longer that it should be to answer a button question. I'll shut up now. 🙂

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