How to sew a button in 4 steps

Traditional sewing skills are becoming a lost art as we are able to replace clothes so easily these days. But when a button drops off a shirt or coat, it’s an easy fix. Here's our failsafe guide to sewing on a button.

You will need:

Needle
Thread
Scissors
Tape measure
Toothpick or matchstick
Your button

Your step-by-step guide

1. If you are replacing a button that has fallen off, you can usually see where it should be by traces of the original stitches. If not, check the distance between each button and the edge of your garment using your tape measure.

2. Thread your needle, doubling the thread and knotting at the end. Start your stitch from inside the garment and sew a couple of small stitches on the spot from the inside to make it more secure.

3. Thread the button on to the needle from the front and start stitching through the buttonholes. If there are two holes in your button, just work up through one hole and down through the next about four or five times for a shirt or top and up to eight times for a coat button. If your button has four holes, check the stitching pattern on the other buttons to keep it consistent. They might have parallel stitches or diagonal stitches crossing over each other.

4. After your last stitch, bring the needle underneath the button to wrap the thread around the stitching between the underside of the button and the garment to secure the stitches. Then pierce through to take the thread back to the inside of the garment and do a couple of secure stitches there before tying a secure knot and cutting your threads.

Sew a button onto a coat or jacket

If you are sewing a button on to a coat or jacket, you need to leave enough room underneath the button so that when your coat is done up, the fabric underneath doesn’t bunch up. All you need to do is follow the same steps as before, but place a toothpick or matchstick on top of the button before you start stitching over it. When you get to step 4, remove the toothpick before you wrap the thread around the stitching underneath the button. As you're wrapping the thread around the stitches, lift the button away from the coat to close up the gap left by the toothpick. This will give you enough room for the thicker coat fabric to fit underneath the button when you do up your coat.