BERNINA Corporate Blog -
Welcome to the Business Casual series! We will share exciting tips from various inspiration magazines about sewing elements such as polo and lapel collars, sleeves or cuffs. Todays tip about how to sew an elegant concealed button placket is taken from inspiration issue 70.
If you want to read more helpful tutorials, you can find an overview here: “Tips and Tricks”. It’s worth checking back regularly or subscribing to the newsletter to make sure you can learn our experts’ tricks!
What is a concealed button placket?
A concealed button placket looks very stylish and lengthens the torso visually. It is also ideal if you can’t find the right buttons since they are covered.
Stylish and fresh summer combo from inspiration Magazine 70. The pattern for this blouse and skirt are available in the inspiration Magazine 70 only.
Unlike with a “normal” button placket, the right-front section is cut out wider than the left-front section. You need more fabric so you can create two plackets on top of each other. The bottom one has buttonholes, the top one is 1mm wider and covers the buttonholes & buttons. Only the button on the collar is still visible.
Close up of the concealed button placket.
NOTES
We show the wrong side of the fabric in our drawings.
YELLOW means that the right side of the fabric is visible at this point.
The button placket does not need additional sewing allowance.
Drawing a concealed button placket
Some patterns already have a concealed button placket, but if you want to add this to your favorite blouse, then you have to adapt your right-front section. Our drawings will help you with this.
In addition to the “right side edge” which is where you cut your fabric, there is the “left side edge” line on the pattern sheet. We’ve drawn the edges in different colours to make things clearer.
- The distance from the “front edge” (red line) to the “right side edge” is three times as great as the distance from the “front edge” to the “stitch line” (dotted line). The “front edge” is the edge of the concealed button placket which will be visible from the front.
- From the “front edge” to the “left side edge”, it is twice as great as the distance from the “front edge” to the “stitch line” -2mm.
- From the “left side edge” to the “right side edge” its the same size as the “front edge” to the “stitch line” + 2 mm.
You can see an example of the exact measurements in the second drawing.
We chose a button with a diameter of 1.25 cm for our blouse. A button placket should be double the width of the button, meaning the first two rows from the right should be 2.5 cm wide. The third row from the right should be 2mm shorter (2.3 cm), so the buttonhole layer is shorter then the top layer and therefore covered. The last row is 2.3 cm +4 mm (twice the amount which was taken away of the third row), which is 2.7 cm in total. The 4 mm (dotted line) are the sewing allowance which will be hidden inside the first and second row.
Widths for a button of 1.25 cm diameter.
Tips
- Before you cut your fabric, download and print our Concealed button placket on blouse test example, then cut it out. Follow the steps to understand which lines you have to fold in which direction, where to stitch and where the 4 mm sewing allowance will be hidden.
- We suggest you cut both the right and left pieces from your fabric with the added width for the concealed button placket. You can remove the difference for the left front section later – that way, nothing can go wrong and you won’t cut your right front section too short.
- If you use buttons of a different size, this also changes the distance from the centre-front to the front edge, as well as the position of the line of stitching ! Note that the position of the front edge (red line) always remains unchanged. A button placket is always twice as wide as the button – so if your button is 1.5 cm in diameter, instead of our 1.25 cm for the “Lemon” blouse, the distances from left to right would be:
| 0.4 cm + 2.8 cm (3.2 cm) | 2.8 cm | 3 cm | 3 cm |
How to sew a concealed button placket
Fold and iron the right-front section inwards along the “left edge” line (green).
Fold and iron inwards once more along the “front edge” line (red). The “right side edge” should be 4 mm to the left of the “stitch line”. You can topstitch the facing along the (dotted) stitch line. After you stitch it down, the “right side edge” is hidden inside the button placket.
The grey lines are the buttonholes.
You fold the buttonhole placket (with the grey lines) along the stitch line to “front edge”; the buttonhole placket should fall short of the “front edge” by approx. 2 mm. Press with an iron. Insert 5 evenly distributed buttonholes along the buttonhole placket (not like in the drawing). You should always place one button at around bust height. The Buttonhole Foot with Slide #3A is a great help to sew multiple buttonholes of the exact same size.
You have now finished the right-front placket. Put the right-frong section aside and continue with the left-front section. You can now cut off the left-front section right at the “left edge” (green line). No seam allowance is needed here.
Fold the edge (green line) inwards twice by 2.5 cm; press and stitch down. The Edgestitch Foot #10 will come in handy for this step! Complete your blouse according to your instructions and sew on buttons: Either by hand or with the Button Sew-On Foot #18.
You have an elegant piece at hand!
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