Not what they call 'buttoned up'!

Have you ever had the experience of going to put on a blouse or other garment you really love only to find that one of the buttons is missing? Or, even worse, have you been out and about when the button and snap fastener on what you're wearing pops off?

Given the way modern clothing is made, it's not surprising that we quickly end up far from 'buttoned up'! In industry, buttons are only rarely sewn on by hand, and the same is true for other types of fastening, such as snap fasteners. Instead, these items are added by machine, often with very rapid 'punch stitching' that is not fastened on or fastened off properly.

When you buy clothing made by an individual, there is a good chance the buttons or other fasteners will have been sewn on by hand and the person will have the first anchored the thread before attaching the button plus will then 'finish off' properly. So there's far less risk of the buttons coming off.

In the photos, I'm showing the problem that occurs. In the black-and-white striped shirt, the button was 'punch stitched' on and through successive washings, the thread has started to unravel because it was never finished off. If I hadn't caught this in time, the button would've likely come off - perhaps in the washing machine - or otherwise been lost. In the photos of the strawberry blouse, the fasteners are all transparent plastic snap fasteners. Apart from the fact these are less durable than metal snap fasteners, they have been put on by very rapid methods and are slowly but surely coming undone, one by one.

What can we do to deal with this? One tactic, any time you buy a piece of clothing, is to over-sew the buttons or fasteners yourself, finishing off well so that they do not unravel. This way, they won't fall off. An additional tactic is to always look for clothing that offers you spare buttons which match those on the garment. These can be kept in a safe place; if they're not actually sewn into the garment but, instead, come in a small plastic Ziploc bag, you can run a thread through the Ziploc and hang this on the hanger where you keep the garment. Or, put a safety pin through the top of the Ziploc bag and have a place where you keep these bags. I have a number of spare buttons in small Ziploc bags attached to the wire baskets where I keep my sweaters and other folded garments.

One final note of irony: both the garments shown above are sold by an extremely high profile women's-wear catalog company; as I am being 'brand-discreet' in this blog, I won't name the firm!