Sewing Argyll Jacket buttons

[Verity]

Tailors in the old days would have found this unacceptable, because the long shanks on the buttons sewn onto the surface makes the buttons stick out and flop around in a sloppy way.

They had two ways of making the nonfunctional surface buttons lay flat and neat

1) sew the buttons directly on the surface but use buttons with very short shanks. (These are more difficult to sew on.)

2) have a small round buttonhole in the surface, the button passing through and being held by a Cotter Pin on the backside.

The advantage of the second option is that you can easily swap out buttons.

As a child I was told that the cotter pin method was preferable because you can remove the buttons if you need to 1) clean the jacket or 2) polish the silver buttons. That way whatever you are doing doesn't damage the other material.

Verity