I did some 18th century metallic buttonhole samples this week and I’m very happy with them! They’re

I did some 18th century metallic buttonhole samples this week and I’m very happy with them! They’re something I’ve been meaning to learn for a while, and they turned out to be less fussy than I expected.I tried a few different techniques, but I like the first one I tried best - the one on the brown ribbed silk that consists of strips of vellum wrapped in thin metal strips and sewn on with widely spaced buttonhole stitches in thin metallic thread. Some of these are functional buttonholes and some are false. For the functional ones I cut and overcast them first, and I do the overcasting stitches much closer together than usual because the buttonhole stitches here don’t really finish the edge like regular ones do. I also tried one where the vellum is stitched down and thick metallic thread is laid across in in rows, with buttonhole stitches done over it, but I found this to be more tedious and less shiny. All these have little bar tacks on the ends that I did by taking 2 or 3 big stitches in heavy white silk thread and then doing closely spaced buttonhole stitches on them in more of the thin metallic thread.I think I’m confident enough now with this technique to try them on a garment, but first I’ll have to learn how to do metallic thread covered buttons, which I’m a bit intimidated by. The buttonholes seem to be pretty sturdy and I’m interested to see how well they hold up to wear.I have no particular plan to do metallic things on the pale green fabrics, but will definitely make a 1730′s waistcoat with silver buttonholes from the brown ribbed silk, and I think I’d like to try some metal embroidery on the pale purple one! -- source link

More pics about