Making a fabric-covered button

Do you have one of those shirts that’s so comfortable and flattering that you wear it at least ten times as often as any of your other clothes?

This wine-red American Eagle shirt with fabric-covered buttons is one of those for me. After being worn a bazillion times, it recently lost one of its buttons.

Fortunately, there was extra fabric below the collar (where the label was printed on the back inside yoke) that I could use to make a new fabric-covered button.

I found a button that was about the size of the ones on the shirt and cut a circle of fabric out from the inner yoke. (You can buy special forms for making fabric-covered buttons, but I didn’t feel like making a trip to the fabric store.)

Because I would be covering the button with fabric, I wouldn’t be able to sew it to the shirt the traditional way. So I used a piece of wire to create a loop by which I would attach the button to the shirt.

I bent the ends of the wire to stabilize it.

I did a running stitch on the edges of the fabric circle and laid the scrap wool and button at its center. I pulled the running stitch, drawing the fabric tight around the button.

The fabric on the new button was a little bigger and darker than the other buttons, the latter probably because it was on the inside and had never been exposed to the sun. So I attached the new button as the top button – that way, the small differences look like they’re intentional.