Today I sewed the last of 89 buttons on my Ladybug wall hanging. Probably everybody knows this trick already, but I learned it only recently from Sue Hausmann’s Sew Fast, Faster, Fastest. Double your sewing thread, and thread it into the needle, so that you have two threads going through the eye. Knot all ends, giving you four threads with each stitch. A couple of stitches through the button, a couple of tacking stitches, and you’re done!
Here’s a tantalizing detail of the wall hanging. I want to write about it for a publication that doesn’t want a project to have been splashed all over the internet (or even modestly published on a little-known blog) before it is published with them.
The piece is knitted on the Ultimate Sweater Machine (but could also be hand-knitted), pieced, machine-embroidered, quilted, embellished. It has a bold red ladybug with black spots, surrounded by this green and yellow background. Wide red borders and yellow corners finish the piece. The 89 black buttons, in a wide range of diameters, are spaced randomly all around the border, to pick up the dot motif from the ladybug. This photo was taken before the buttons were sewn on. I’ll let you know where to see the whole thing as soon as I can.
Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on your point of view, the use of 89 buttons barely made a dent in our button stash.