{"id":1053,"date":"2010-06-08T09:56:18","date_gmt":"2010-06-08T16:56:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ittakesballstoknit.com\/?p=1053"},"modified":"2010-06-08T09:56:18","modified_gmt":"2010-06-08T16:56:18","slug":"just-button-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ittakesballstoknit.com\/?p=1053","title":{"rendered":"Just Button it!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Finding the perfect button for a particular garment can sometimes be a daunting task, which is why some people find the button first<\/em>, then find the yarn to match it. Finding the perfect buttonhole, until now, has also been a daunting task. I know of a really good one when working on a knitting machine, but by hand, I have often used the cast off, cast on method for doing the holes. Whenever I was lucky enough, I would do a YO, then add an improvised twist to keep the hole a little tighter. This opportunity doesn’t present itself too often however. Back to the cast off\/cast on method … for those that have not done a 1 row buttonhole, the concept is actually quite simple. When you get to the point in your knitting where you want a buttonhole, you cast off the number of stitches for the hole (this depends on the yarn, needles, and size of the button you are using) that you need. You continue on your work and when you return to the point of the hole, you cast back on the number of stitches that you are missing. As you can imagine, there are numerous methods of doing each part of this, and every knitter probably has their favorite or has fudged one way or another to satisfy their needs.<\/p>\n

This is actually a very good method, and not too bad aesthetically – especially when the button is closed, hiding the cast off row. Yes, unfortunately the first stitch in the cast off row doesn’t look as nice as the rest. There’s a bit of a gap in it and when done in stocking stitch, the ridge appears on the wrong side of the work, accentuating it. Of course, there’s also the problem of the appearance of the cast on stitches again. Also, because it is a buttonhole, you need a stretchy cast on in order to keep the functionality of the hole. If it is too tight, it will wear out very quickly if the garment is used frequently, or you will have a difficult time getting the button through the hole. Of course, it the cast on is too stretchy or too big, the button doesn’t work and your garment flaps open. I didn’t have an immediate solution for the cast off, but for the moment my concerns were on the cast on stitches. Even as I’m writing this, I’m thinking of something for the cast off stitches though (I’ll experiment with that and let you know how it works out) that may also work.<\/p>\n

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Boo!<\/p><\/div>\n

Top left – 3 stitch w\/stretchy, Right – 3 stitch w\/regular, Bottom – 5 stitch w\/stretchy<\/p>\n

Anyway, I recently did a post about JenyC’s surprisingly stretchy cast on for the sock KAL that is going on right here! Then I though, why the heck not?! So I did a five hole buttonhole in stocking stitch using a regular cast off, but with JenyC’s cast on. I liked it much better already, and I’m not that good at the cast on yet – I’ll work on that. I then tried it with 3 stitches with the stretchy cast on and a regular cast on. The stretchy cast on looks better, and is definitely much stretchier that the regular. It would make the opening and closing of the button much easier. The results are in the picture above. So I had a start for what was going to be a great experiment on coming up with the perfect buttonhole. I only had to solve a couple of minor issues and then I would have it. That was Saturday. Sunday, I went onto my friend Jacquie’s blog, to help another friend with the charting software she has on there, and I came across two things – a really cool iPad cover pattern done in Shadow Knitting (I’ll do a post on that in the near future), and an awesome buttonhole variation she worked on and used in the pattern. So instead of reinventing the wheel, here is a link to Jacquie’s blog with the pattern and a post about the buttonhole.<\/p>\n

Jacquie’s Buttonhole<\/a><\/p>\n

I will do more on buttonholes later (including looking at the one from Knitting Daily), but this should get you going. Hmmm, now to scale down her pattern for an iPhone for Simon.<\/p>\n

Hugzzz \ud83d\ude0e<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Finding the perfect button for a particular garment can sometimes be a daunting task, which is why some people find the button first, then find the yarn to match it. Finding the perfect buttonhole, until now, has also been a daunting task. I know of a really good one when working on a knitting machine, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[127,10,13],"tags":[297,999,144,204,300,299,979,302,298,274,301],"class_list":{"0":"post-1053","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-buttons","7":"category-lessons","8":"category-techniques","9":"tag-buttonhole","10":"tag-buttons","11":"tag-cast-off","12":"tag-chart","13":"tag-jacquie","14":"tag-jenyc","15":"tag-patterns","16":"tag-shadow-knitting","17":"tag-stretchy-cast-off","18":"tag-stretchy-cast-on","19":"tag-technique","20":"pmpro-has-access","21":"czr-hentry"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pNDS0-gZ","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ittakesballstoknit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1053","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ittakesballstoknit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ittakesballstoknit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ittakesballstoknit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ittakesballstoknit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1053"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ittakesballstoknit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1053\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1056,"href":"https:\/\/ittakesballstoknit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1053\/revisions\/1056"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ittakesballstoknit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1053"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ittakesballstoknit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1053"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ittakesballstoknit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1053"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}