Make buttonholes is practice, practice, practice.  If you are a master of button holes you will understand what I am saying, but for those of you who are scared of the dreaded button hole please read on.  Most modern sewing machines have an automatic button hole, but the old machines don’t.  The trick with button holes is practice, practice, practice.

No other words for it.  A couple of tips though.  Keep the zig zag open, not tight.  Set the straight stitch dial between .5 and 1 on most machines.  I a not talking about the zig zag width I am talking about the openness of the zig zag between each zig and zag.  The zig zag width will be determined by the size of the button.  A standard size would be around 4 on the zig zag

It you are using a stretch fabric, stabilize the buttonhole using interfacing in between the fabric.

Just practice, and if you have the button hole with the above details, even if you make a mistake you can unpick the button hole easily.  If you have the button hole very tight it will be hard to unpick and that is where you run into problems.

Until you cut the button hole you can unpick it as many times as you like.  Always unpick from the wrong side, so if you do slip and cut the fabric, (which you won’t of course) then you have not done any major damage.

Happy altering
Judith aka genie