Re-covered Covered Buttons

I hate throwing things away. Really, if I think I can use something later, I'll keep it. Like this thread, for instance...



I am not even 100% sure what I used it for, but I saved it. So I finally found a good use for it when I wanted to make some covered buttons for my vintage coat in progress. These buttons are a story all in themselves. My husband and I went to our first auction ever about 2 years ago for some vintage star wars toys. It was about 5 minutes from out house and he went to see what they had before it started, so when I pulled in the driveway as I was coming home from work, he met me outside and said we should probably go to this auction. We went and had a blast! I tried to win some sewing stuff, but some old ladies beat me. But we got some pretty asian pictures for the house and some lady gave us some stuff that she had won in her lot. So we ended up with an old wooden chair and some valances that we had nowhere to put. Long story short, we took the fabric off the valances and used the wood for cat boxes in the windows and I figured I could use the fabric at some point.

Today, I am using the covered buttons that came on the valances. However, I did not like the fabric on the buttons, so I had to uncover them and recover them in the matching fabric for my coat. It was kind of a bitch to undo the buttons. They were really stuck on there! So after a bit of fidgeting with the first one, I decided that if I cut the fabric a little on the front and pull it to the back, I could use it to pop the backs out. It worked!




Cut fabric on the front... and fabric pulled to the back.

It helped speed the process up had them all apart in no time. To re-cover them, I took one of the scraps of fabric that I had removed and used it as a guide and cut a rough circle of the matching fabric. Then I used some thread that I had saved (see! I told myself I would use it eventually!) to run a basting stitch all around the edge so I could pull it taught around the button top to give the front a smoother shape.



Then when it was smooth enough, I applied the back and gave it a good push and it snapped into place. I have other covered button 'kits' that come with the little device to put the fabric in and to push the backs into place, but none of them were the 1.5 inch size of these buttons, so I had to wing it. They feel pretty secure when I tug on them, so I think it'll be ok. For the fabric, I used the back facing that I had originally cut for the coat, and for some reason when I put it on, it was too short. Not sure what happened there, but at least I was able to use the fabric for something.

Anywho, 4 out of 6 of them were missing the shanks in the back, which were just little pieces of wire. So I took one of the long pieces of wire that had attached them to the valance and cut them down and fashioned my own shanks.


I think they turned out well!

Before and after!