#wawak

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

Meow :3

Putting Button Pins to Use: Silk Dupioni and Vintage Glass Buttons

After looking over the button possibilities for this evening blouse, I settled on some vintage glass buttons in white with gold trim. You have two options, or three I guess, when you have something that needs dry cleaning and you have options.

This third and worst idea is chancing it and leaving on the buttons. This is such a bad idea that good laundries will take them off and then resew then and charge you for it because they don’t want to hear your shrieks of dismay should a button be lost or ruined. You can take them off and sew them on yourself, which is one of those small mindless hand work tasks that you may or may not have the patience for. Or you can use button pins which is what I decided to do.

Button pins are like safety pins except instead of having a loop at one end, they have a little hump in the middle of them. You start on the wrong side of your garment so you can pin through the fabric to the right side, catch the shank of the button and then dip back into the wrong side to fasten the pin. Obviously, this only works with buttons with shanks, but most fancy buttons are shanked.

Tomorrow the full garment and pattern and some alterations I made.

Prrp

Button Safety Pin

I got asked a question, so here is a Button Pin, aka Button Safety Pin. So, you can use these instead of sewing on precious buttons that you need to take off for cleaning. The little dent makes it easier to push through the material, catch the shank of the button--the buttons have to have shanks--and then go back into the material. These are a 3/4ths of an inch long.

Of course, you have to get the hang of them, but you can see why they would be handy on something that you don’t wear open. Any glass or metal buttons are better off not going through the cleaners, and even when they say, they can be cleaned, I avoid it unless it is hand washing.

I end up using them for knitting markers too. They work for knitting because they don’t have the looped portion at the closed end; safety pins with the loops would get stuck on the yarn or thread, so don’t use those.

I get mine from Wawak via their website. They have a big, honking catalog that has lots of stuff, although some of it is clearly for businesses rather than home dressmakers.

How to Hand Darn

If you were as inspired as I was by Luke Deverell’s work over at Darn & Dusted, Reddit member AnalogDimitri has a pretty nice guide on how you can learn to hand darn something yourself. Tools you’ll need: some scissors, heavy sewing needles (maybe some darning needles), and heavy thread (such as topstitching thread). You can buy these supplies at Amazon or Wawak, although I recommend just going to your local sewing supplies store.