The easiest way to sew on a button!

Yesterday on QUILTsocial we used THE Dream Machine 2 to free motion quilt our Easter banner. Today we finish the banner by trimming, adding binding and using this great machine to sew on buttons as embellishment.

The door banner first needs to be squared and trimmed through all three layers using a rotary cutter and ruler.

Before sewing the binding onto the outside edge, we need to add a hanging sleeve to the top back of the wallhanging. To make my hanging sleeves, I measure the width of the wallhanging and cut a strip of fabric that is that exact length – I usually make the strip at least 4″ wide. I fold the ends over twice and stitch them, then I fold the strip in half lengthwise and press. I center the sleeve on the back of the quilt top and line up the raw edges of the sleeve with the top raw edge of the quilt. I then pin it in place and sew on my binding.

For this quilt I decided to sew the binding to the back of the quilt so that I could then fold it to the front and topstitch using THE Dream Machine 2. If you want more information on making binding, check out my QUILTsocial post on October 31, 2014.

Now we’re going to add some decorative buttons to the door banner. The button sewing foot for THE Dream Machine 2 is foot “M” and it looks like this:

To sew a button using this foot, you first raise the foot and then slide the button onto the metal plate under the plastic part of the foot. Position the fabric under the foot and then lower it into place.

If your button has four holes, you stitch the two holes closest to you first. You line up the holes of the button so that they’re in the position shown in the photo. Using the hand wheel on the side of the machine, make sure that the needle will go into both holes without hitting the button.

All you do next is press the start button and the machine stitches through the two holes and then makes locking stitches before stopping.

After the first two holes are stitched, you pull the button towards you and line up the second set of holes in position. Once again, turn the hand wheel manually to make sure that the needle goes into the two holes first and then hit the start button. Once the sewing is complete, don’t use the automatic thread cutter to cut the threads. Instead pull the button towards you and manually cut the threads with scissors. Tie the thread ends into a knot on the wrong side of the quilt and then clip the excess threads with your scissors.

I sewed three different colored buttons onto each of the white borders and then my Easter door banner was finished! Just in time to welcome the Easter Bunny!

This little banner was fun and quick to make! Being able to use THE Dream Machine 2 to do all of the applique, embroidery, quilting, binding AND button sewing was amazing!! I hope you’ve enjoyed this little project and the free standing lace tips that I shared on Monday. Have a very Happy Easter!