How to Sew a Buttonhole (By Machine and By Hand)

For something so small, a buttonhole carries an unreasonable amount of fear. People will happily sew an entire shirt and then leave the front gaping open for a month because they’re scared of the last step. I understand it completely. I avoided buttonholes for the best part of a year by putting poppers and toggles on everything I made.

A buttonhole is really just a tight zigzag sewn in a rectangle, with a slit cut down the middle. Once you’ve made three or four, the mystery evaporates. This guide covers all three ways you’re likely to make one: the modern automatic foot, the older four-step dial, and the hand-worked buttonhole for when you want something that looks made rather than manufactured.

Before you start: always make a test buttonhole

This is the single rule that matters most. Never sew a buttonhole directly onto your garment without testing first. Take a scrap of the same fabric, folded to the same number of layers as your buttonhole placket (usually two layers of fabric plus interfacing), and sew a practice buttonhole on it. Check the size against your actual button. Check the stitch density. Only when the test looks right do you go near the real thing.

Interfacing matters here too. A buttonhole sewn through a single layer of soft fabric will pucker and stretch. The button band should always be interfaced: a layer of fusible interfacing on the wrong side gives the stitches something firm to bite into.

Method one: the automatic (one-step) buttonhole

Most machines made in the last fifteen years have a one-step buttonhole. You drop your button into a little sliding cradle on the back of the buttonhole foot, and the machine measures it and sews a buttonhole to fit. It feels like magic the first time.

1. Attach the buttonhole foot. It’s the long one with the open channel underneath and the sliding plate at the back.
2. Place your button in the cradle and slide it closed so the button is held snugly. This sets the length.
3. Lower the buttonhole lever, usually a small bar that pulls down from above the needle area, behind the foot. The machine won’t sew the automatic cycle unless this lever is down.
4. Mark where the buttonhole goes on your fabric with chalk or a removable marker, position the fabric, and start sewing. The machine stitches one side, the bar tack, the other side, the second bar tack, and stops itself.

If your buttonholes come out uneven from side to side, it’s usually because the fabric isn’t feeding smoothly. Hold the thread tails gently at the start and let the machine pull the fabric itself; don’t push or drag it.

Method two: the four-step buttonhole

Older and budget machines use a four-step buttonhole, where you turn a dial to each of four settings and sew each part yourself. It sounds fiddly, and it is slightly more hands-on, but it gives you complete control over the length, which the automatic version sometimes gets wrong on thick fabric.

The four steps, in order, are:

1. The first bar tack: a few wide zigzag stitches across the bottom of the buttonhole to anchor it.
2. The left side: a column of tight zigzag running up one side. You decide the length: stop when the column is slightly longer than your button’s diameter.
3. The top bar tack: another few wide stitches across the top.
4. The right side: a column of tight zigzag running back down, parallel to the first.

Mark the start and end points on your fabric clearly before you begin, and aim to make both side columns exactly the same length. Going slowly is fine; accuracy beats speed every time with buttonholes.

Cutting the buttonhole open (the scary part)

You’ve sewn a neat rectangle of stitches. Now you have to cut a slit down the middle without cutting through the bar tacks at either end. This is where good buttonholes get ruined, so do it carefully.

• Use a seam ripper or a buttonhole chisel. A seam ripper works; a buttonhole chisel (a small straight blade you tap with a tap) is cleaner if you make a lot of them.
• Place a pin across each end, just inside the bar tacks. The pin acts as a stop: if your blade slips, it hits the pin instead of slicing through the end of the buttonhole.
• Cut from each end towards the middle rather than dragging the blade the whole length in one go. You have far more control this way.

A dab of fray-stopping liquid along the cut edge, left to dry before cutting, keeps the raw edges from fluffing up over time. It’s optional but worth it on fabrics that fray easily.

Method three: the hand-worked buttonhole

If you’re making something special (a tailored coat, a linen shirt, anything you want to look properly handmade), a hand-worked buttonhole is worth the time. It uses a buttonhole stitch, a looped stitch that locks the edge, worked densely around the slit.

1. Mark and cut the slit first this time, then overcast the raw edges loosely to stop fraying while you work.
2. Thread a needle with buttonhole twist or a strong topstitching thread. Knot the end.
3. Work the buttonhole stitch closely along one side: bring the needle up through the slit, loop the thread under the needle point, and pull so a small knot forms right at the cut edge. Repeat, keeping the stitches even and close together.
4. Fan the stitches around the end nearest the garment edge (this end takes the strain from the button), work back down the other side, and finish with a bar tack at the far end.

It’s slow, and a single hand-worked buttonhole can take twenty minutes when you’re learning, but the result is something machines can’t quite replicate. The slightly raised, corded edge is what you see on good tailoring.

Spacing and placement

For a shirt or blouse, the most important buttonhole is the one at the bust: place a button there first, then space the others evenly above and below it. Even spacing matters more than any particular measurement, and the eye notices an uneven gap immediately.

Horizontal buttonholes (running across the band) take strain better and are standard on cuffs, waistbands, and anywhere a button pulls sideways. Vertical buttonholes (running up and down) are used on plackets where there’s not much width, like a shirt front. Match what your pattern specifies.

Stop being scared of them

Buttonholes are the last small fear most new sewists carry, and they shouldn’t be. Test on a scrap, interface the band, go slowly, and pin the ends before you cut. Make five of them on offcuts this week and the sixth, the one on your actual garment, will feel like nothing at all. That gaping, unfinished shirt cardigan I avoided for a year? It took eleven minutes to finish once I stopped being scared of it.