More fun with fabric buttons

More Fun with Fabric!

But first.... awesome button board stuff:

Since we opened an actual brick and mortar store (in Seattle's historic Georgetown neighborhood!) I've had to think of ways to decorate it. I had to come up with a way of displaying buttons. I quickly learned that old photo frame + foamcore + canvas = AWESOME Button Board!

I just covered a piece of foamcore with canvas. Then I used the canvas covered foamcore to replace the glass in a crappy old frame. I just bent the pin on the back of the buttons to a 90 degree angle and stuck it in.

Okay... on to the fun with fabric. Please see this post first, if you are not familiar with fabric buttons.

I went to Pacific Fabric Outlet and bought a bunch of fat quarters, which are basically just small squares of fabric. On Friday it's buy three get one free :) So I picked up a bunch of cute prints and I got out 5 different button machines to make this board. I used 1, 1-1/2, 2-1/4, 3 and 3-1/2 inch machines. If these sizes seem familiar it's because those are the sizes that are preset on the Adjustable Rotary Cutter, which I have decided is the ONLY WAY TO CUT CIRCLES FOR MAKING FABRIC BUTTONS. Alright, it's not the only way, you could use scissors also (I do not recommend the graphic punch, see this post if you're thinking about trying it.)

I started noticing this time that the more perfect my circles were, the better my buttons turned out. When my fabric circles were a little off, I had a much higher failure rate and more escaped edges (keep reading for a description of escaped edges).

For all of the fabric pictured here, fuzzy leopard print excluded, I had to use 2 layers of fabric to get the buttons to crimp properly. The fuzzy leopard print was thick enough to work flawlessly every time. I had about a 10% failure rate with all the other fabrics, even with the multiple layers. By failure, I mean that the fabric didn't crimp at all or tore in the machine.

A lot of the times with the double layer standard cotton fabrics, I had small area of fabric that was pinched in between the shell and the backing, but folded backwards, and didn't crimp all the way under the backing. I refer to this problem as escaped edges. I did not consider buttons with escaped edges as failures. I just trimmed them down and called it good. It's such a tiny little piece that is hardly noticeable at all on the back of the button. If escaped edges is a big problem for you, I would recommend having your machine adjusted for fabric. Sometimes if you cut the escaped edge too close to the button, it becomes un-pinched and therefore ruins the button. So be careful when trimming escaped edges!


I pressed out 58 buttons in all, had 5 that were completely unusable, 12 with escaped edges that I trimmed off and used anyway, and 41 totally perfect fabric buttons. I noticed that my model 225 had a better success rate than my other machines. It didn't seem to matter if I used a fabric or a paper base layer. It really depends on the fabric you're using and how smooth the inside of the dies on your particular machine are. Sometimes, like with the fuzzy leopard print, you just find the magical combination and it works every time. Other times, like with the cotton pink skull fabric, it just doesn't work as consistently and you have to keep trying.

Good luck with your projects and please feel free to comment here with any advice or new ideas!