Button It

Well, I got my daughter's Easter shoes exchanged. They had another pair just like them! :-) I guess someone was having a little fun.

Besides the shoe mishap on Easter, I also had the oven go out. Worked fine Saturday morning for breakfast but died around dinner time. Thank goodness we had our family get together the weekend before.

The oven got hit by lightning a few years ago , unfortunately it did not damage it enough to get a new one, but it did cook a little hot after that! :-)

You know what the worst thing about having your oven go out? You have to clean the darn thing before the repair people come out! Well, I guess it needed cleaning anyway. I found some wonderful homemade oven cleaner recipes on Pinterest......but that is another story.

So while I am waiting around for the repair people (they gave me a narrow window of somewhere between 1-5pm) I wanted to show you the way I finish button hole elastic.

For those who don't know what button hole elastic is, it is elastic that is made with little button holes down the center. Instead of securing the elastic inside of a waistband, you sew a button on either side. This allows you to adjust the waistband of children's clothes.

Button hole elastic comes in black or white and in 3/4" or 1" wide. I use a lot of this stuff so I buy it on line by the roll.

There are two purposes of finishing the ends of the elastic. One is you don't want the elastic to ravel. The other is the end finish treatment will help prevent the elastic from being sucked into the waistband if it gets unbuttoned.

Note: If your end treatment is extremely bulky you may find it better to run the elastic through the waistband first then finish the edges.

I like to use 1/4-3/8" ribbon or twill tape to finish the ends. You could also use a strip of matching fabric. The selvage edge would work great. The length of the ribbon/twill tape needs to be at least twice the width of the elastic. I am showing you 1 inch black button hole elastic for this tutorial. My orange ribbon is 3/8 inches wide.

The first step is to trim the end of the elastic. I want the length from the first button hole to the raw edge be at least twice the width of the ribbon. I center my ribbon and secure with straight pins.

With a narrow zig zag stitch I stitch on the edge of the ribbon.

I then trim the elastic to reduce the bulk. I don't want the trim too close that I have to worry about the elastic raveling.

With a piece of Wonder Tape I fold down one end and secure it in place.

I folded the other side down and trimmed it a little so that the ribbon overlapped. I remove the paper back and secure the other side down. The important step here is to try to line up the top edge neatly.

The end is then folded down and secured with pin.

I figured it was easier to show you my Bernina sewing machine settings.

• I have a Ball Needle in my machine (it helps prevent skipping).
• My needle is set all the way to the left so it lines up with my foot.
• I have set the stitch to a zig zag with the width of 1.5.
• It does not show here but I also set my needle into the down position.

I am going to start out with a zero length so I can tack my ends.

After about 3-4 stitches in place, I adjusted the length to 1.5 and stitched across. I ended the stitch by adjusting the length back to Zero to secure the stitch.

And it is done. I now just need to repeat the process on the other side.