Hello. My name is Mr. Linen.
This time, the topic is denim.
Among those who love denim, I assume many people prefer button-fly jeans—closing the fly with buttons rather than a zipper.
Button flies have the advantage of looking cool, but they also have a drawback: the buttonholes tend to wear out easily.
As you repeatedly fasten and unfasten the buttons, the threads around the holes gradually break, and eventually the hole can tear, making it impossible to button up.
If that happens, an alteration shop can fix it nicely, but it will cost money.
Being stingy by nature, I wondered if there was something I could do myself, came up with a certain method, and have been practicing it ever since.
I would like to introduce that method today.
目次
Prevention Rather Than Repair
What I am introducing here is not a way to repair a buttonhole after it has already torn, but a way to prevent it from tearing in the first place.
Just like cleaning a toilet, I think it’s better to clean a little every day so dirt doesn’t build up, rather than leaving it for three months until it turns pitch black and then cleaning it.
How to Reinforce the Buttonhole
Now, here is the actual method to prevent the hole from tearing.
The process is simple: just wrap thread around the edge of the hole over and over and over again.
In the first place, a buttonhole is made by cutting a slit in the fabric (denim) and then wrapping thread around the edge to prevent fraying—or at least, that’s how it should be.
If you wrap new thread over the existing thread, layering it multiple times like a matryoshka doll, the layers of thread will absorb the damage caused by fastening and unfastening the button, preventing that damage from reaching the fabric core itself.
No matter how much thread you use for reinforcement, it’s still just thread, so of course it can break.
However, if you wrap it many layers deep—dozens of layers, even—it will take years or even decades before the damage reaches the core fabric.
When you start thinking, “The thread is breaking too much and the core fabric is about to show,” you can simply wrap it again to restore it. By repeating this process, you can obtain an almost immortal buttonhole.
In the photo below, there are three buttonholes. The upper holes are opened and closed more frequently, so they are more worn and have been reinforced more heavily. Even within a single hole, the right side (the outer side) tends to wear more, so I focus reinforcement there.
Specific Working Method
As for how exactly to wrap the thread, my method is very much that of a complete amateur.
Instead of inserting the needle from the back and then from the front, imagine dropping the needle into the hole like fishing. Loop the thread around the edge of the hole, then insert the needle from the back again, and repeat this process.
As shown in the right-hand hole in the illustration below, passing the needle through the same spot many times and wrapping it in multiple layers increases strength.
I think black thread is the least noticeable. For faded blue denim, gray thread might be a good choice.
How Long Does It Last?
It has been almost three years since I did this work. I wear these jeans once or twice a week, and the fabric itself still hasn’t torn.
You can actually see that the black thread has broken, which shows that it is fully doing its job as a shield.
You don’t have to start from a brand-new state. Even if the hole has already taken some damage, doing this work in time is more than sufficient.
If you want to keep repair costs as low as possible, I think it’s worth trying this once before the hole completely tears.
That’s all for today. Thank you very much.
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