Shirt Button Placement Tips
In the Choice Pattern introduction video our guest designer gave a few tips about button placement, including a helpful tip for plaids and stripes. While most sewing patterns include marked positions for buttons and buttonholes, these markings should be considered suggestions rather than absolute. A sewist may be able to use that placement without any changes, but in most cases those markings are merely a suggestion. The fullest part of a body changes from person to person and no sewing pattern could ever get it right for everyone. Designers will use the fit model as a reference of where to place these suggested placement markers, but leave it up to the sewist to decide if they need any adjusting.
Where To Start
On a collared shirt, like the Choice Pattern, there are two important places for buttons to live. The first is located on the collar stand, at the center of the wearer’s neck. There shouldn’t be any reason for a sewist to make an adjustment to this area assuming the patternmaker has the placement correct during development and fitting. The center of the button should line up vertically with all the other buttons running down the garment. The top button should also be the anchor that brings your collar to meet at the center front, without any gaps. Typically, this buttonhole will have a horizontal orientation, rather than vertical like the rest of the buttonholes below it.
The second important spot for button placement will be crucial for the sewist to identify before committing to anything permanent. For many, that area will be the bust. Mark exactly where this point is on the garment, during a muslin (toile) fitting or on the final garment. Securing this spot on the garment will stop the garment from gaping open and allowing others to see what is underneath.
Spacing
From here the remaining buttons and buttonholes can be marked equally spaced apart from one another. It might work out to place one between the collar and bust, but some individuals may choose to add a button right under the collar stand to prevent gaping. This is a personal preference, of course, and may not even be necessary depending on the distance between your neck and bustline.
The remaining buttons below the bustline in most cases will be equally spaced and consistent with the top two buttons. Spacing all the buttons equally from one another along the center front of a shirt or dress is typical but not the law by any means. Place them where you think they look right and don’t get hung up on what is traditional.
If equal spacing between all buttons is the way to go for you, make it easy by using an expanding sewing gauge. You could do math, but why waste precious time when you could just use a tool that tells you exactly where to place your buttons?
A Tip For Striped or Plaid Fabric
Here's a tip for the bottom button if you really want to keep that center front secure. All buttonholes on a shirt below the collar will typically be in a vertical position. This is done to keep both center fronts of the garment in place with one another as the wearer moves. A horizontal buttonhole at the bustline would otherwise allow the shirt to grow wider when the wearer did something like sitting down or opening their arms wide.
However, making the very bottom button closest to the hemline a horizontal buttonhole will prevent the center fronts from shifting vertically. A vertical buttonhole at the bustline and a horizontal buttonhole at the bottom of the garment will create a completely secure center front, which is a nice touch if the fabric used is a stripe, plaid or any patterned fabric you want to stay in place across both left and right fronts. This little detail will be an obvious sign you know exactly what you are doing as a sewist.