15 September 2016

Buttoning It Up

A treatise on sewing.

By Chin Chin

Just a little bit tighter. Pull a bit harder. That should do it. These trousers seem to have shrunk in the wash. Never mind, breath in and one last tug.  Bother! The front button has broken on my favourite chinos, the light green ones which I was hoping to wear with my new purple shirt to the drinks party down the road. Yes, I know that the invitation says “business attire”, but for us literary types “business” is rather a flexible concept. Anyway, fashion icons are fashion icons and not to wear my new shirt would deprive my public of a truly memorable experience. Something must be done. The only question is “what?”

Now I could of course have a word with my wife or one of my daughters. They would have a new button on in a jiffy but, to be honest, I don’t really like the sound of that. We are always hearing how women can do men’s jobs just as well as any male. All right, we live in the 21^st century so we have to put up with that, but if men are to hold their heads up they have to be able to do what are traditionally women’s jobs and preferably do them just a little better than women. I have little experience in button sewing so I will have to work from first principles.

The first step, of course, is a raid on my wife’s sewing box.  Let’s start with the button. Obviously it has to be the right size since otherwise it will come undone or won’t go through the buttonhole. It would be nice if it could be green as well.  Hmm, just black and white. Well, that isn’t perfect.

Actually the colour of a button isn’t as important as you might think. I had a friend who went to a very smart dinner with me at which we had to wear evening dress – that isn’t just the dinner jackets which people wear nowadays, but proper evening dress, tailcoats and white tie; in short, the full penguin. The trouble with that sort of get-up is that it is used so seldom that it hides right at the back of the cupboard, or at least some of it does.  In my friend’s case the “some of it” included everything except the buttons which fasten the white waistcoat.  Now this was rather a dilemma.  If you have seen films starring Fred Astaire you will have noticed that his white waistcoat is fastened by very elegant buttons, probably pearl, possibly jewelled, but either diamond colour or translucent white.

My friend knew that he had some jewelled buttons somewhere; they had come to him with the rest of the rig from his grandfather. It was just a question of where they were. He looked in his stud box.  No luck.  He looked in his wife’s jewel case. Nothing there.  Should he perhaps plead a sudden cold and avoid the dinner altogether?  He certainly didn’t want to do that. It was somewhere where the cooking was said to be excellent, the cellar beyond compare.  No, not turning up wasn’t really an option.  Alexander the Great cut the Gordian knot; what would he have done in these circumstances?

My friend went back to the button box. The only ones of the right size were three large black fly buttons.  They would have to do.  He stitched them to the front of his white waistcoat and appeared in a glittering company looking as if his flies went up to his chest. Actually it didn’t matter a bit. I saw one young lady look at the buttons a little quizzically at which he smiled and said “Scottish Regiment” which seemed to satisfy her. If he had met a Scots lass he would have said “Welsh Regiment”.

In the face of this example, who am I to worry about the colour of a trouser button?  I’ll have that white one.  Now all I need is a reel of green thread, and also a needle.

Oddly, threading a needle is not as easy as you might think. I say “oddly” because old ladies in films never seem to have a problem with it. They pick up the hero’s jacket in one hand, thread a needle with the other and, after a couple of stitches, the job is done and he can return to the fray perfectly dressed. In practice it is more difficult than that. You have to get the cotton through the eye of the needle and you inevitably find that it just won’t go. Press the cotton against the eye and it bunches up.  Miss the eye altogether and the cotton behaves perfectly but the needle remains unthreaded. Really, a camel would be about as easy. Perhaps elderly ladies have particularly nimble fingers, or acute eyesight, or perhaps they are just more experienced. Anyway, I cannot do it. The hole in the needle is just too small. Let’s have another rummage through the work box.  Ah ha, a bigger needle! Much better, I can thread this one easily.

The next step, of course, is to push the needle through the cloth. In films the elderly ladies have thimbles but I don’t know where those are kept.   Never mind, it is only question of pushing, although I am beginning to regret the big needle.  You can get it into one side of the material but it is another matter to get it out the other.  Ouch, pushing the end with my thumb doesn’t word and now there is blood on my shirt.  Never mind, it is a patterned one. Still, something harder and less painful is called for.  Yes, a wooden-backed hairbrush.  There is one over there on the side table.  Oh dear, the needle is now stuck in it.  That is a little awkward because, although a tiny hole in the hairbrush might go unremarked, a large needle sticking out of it is likely to give the next person to use it an unpleasant surprise. Time for some man-tools.  I’ll get my pliers from the garage.

Of course, I should have thought of that from the start.  The pliers make it relatively easy to get the needle through the fabric and, before long, the button is safely sewn on. I cut off the cotton and hold the trousers up to admire my work. More accurately, I try to – because they are now attached to my shirt.  It would have been better, I think, if I had sat at a worktable to do my sewing.

Now I have a problem.  I certainly don’t want to cut the button off and start the whole process all over again, even if I had the skill to cut off a button which is tightly sewed on. No, a more lateral approach is needed.  Cut away the shirt and the trousers will come free of it.

Not, of course, an ideal solution but probably good enough. If I wear a belt and pull the trousers up high, the hole is covered. Anyway, who is to say that a hole over the stomach is not a new innovation in shirt design. Perhaps if I snip away a bit more I could make the hole take the shape of my initials – then I could say that it was the latest fashion in shirts from Hong Kong.

 

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