sewingoflove

I noticed a couple of people who have come here looking for a tutorial on sew-on snaps. Well, I did link to one when I discussed how to make the bands for cuffs, but I think I’ll write a bit of one on here. I took these pictures as I worked on my Garnet til Alexandros (FF9) shoe covers. As always, right click and choose “View Image” to see it bigger.

 First, take a look at your snaps. You’re going to have two sides, one that’s flat and another that’s sort of “bubbly”. The flat one will go with the bulb of the snap facing OUT. The bubbly one will go with the bulb facing IN. In other words, the flat on will be convex, and the bubbly one concave to the fabric, so the flat one will go IN the bubbly one to make the snap! The flat one is to the left here, and the bubbly to the right.

The first thing you’ll need to do is choose where your’ll start your snaps. Since snaps are usually hidden, there are various ways to mark it. I used washable markers since I’m working with vinyl. It’s a pretty ambiguous decision, but I chose to do this because I didn’t want much flapping. Try to keep at least one of your snaps more than 6mm from the edge of the fabric, otherwise you can end up just ripping through it due to the stress on the snaps. You can either sew both snaps at once, or do each individually. I would recommend sewing them together–so you’ll sew one half of one snap, the same half of the other, and then switch to the other side.

Starting a snap is always the hardest. You need to center the hole of the bulb over top of your marking. Knot your thread several times, since you’ll be pulling on both the snap and the thread a lot in sewing and using your piece. Start on top by putting your needle through the mark you made. Place your snap over top of this knot  so you can sort of see it through the hole in the middle of the bulb. If you’re using the bubbly piece like I am here, you can even get the knot through the hole to secure it lightly in place. With your needle on the bottom of the fabric, push up through the right side of one of the holes around the edge of a snap. I find it much easier to work these clockwise. Go back through the fabric outside of the snap, but don’t pull the thread tight. Come back up close to  the left of your other stitch in the hole. Thread your needle through the loose thread you didn’t pull tight just a moment ago. Now you can tighten it up! This is a buttonhole stitch. Keep doing this, until you have about 4-5 buttonhole stitches in that opening.

The next time you come up (after 4-5 stitches) do so in the next opening clockwise from where you were just working. Continue this all the way around the snap. It is best if you can attach all openings, but if you must, missing one or two will not hurt as badly on a bigger snap. To continue onto the other half of the snap, hold the two pieces you want to snap together in the proper position. Starting from the opposite side of the fabric, take an un-knotted needle & thread and go ahead and push it through the center of the bulb, right through the hole and through the other piece of fabric. When the thread is out of the other snap, knot it and pull it tight, continuing the same way as you did the other snap.

That’s it! It’s pretty easy once you get used to it, and can be kind of calming. Tell you what though–it’s saved several costume pieces of mine. No zippers and no velcro risks. Yay! Questions? Comments? Post ‘em!

 Happy Stitching!

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