Review: Button Sewing Foot

Price: ~US$25.00

I'm the first to admit I have a serious addiction to presser feet. I own 99% of the feet Viking makes for my machine and a few others Viking doesn't make. I'm sure I'll have them all one of these days. Most of the feet work wonderfully. Many I can't live without anymore and some others mostly collect dust, and yet I still can't bear to part with them. The button sewing-on foot is one of the gems.

Before Viking came out with this foot I would still sew buttons on by machine, using the hump-jumper thingie and a piece of tape. It was fiddly and I'm not really sure if it was actually easier or faster than sewing them by hand but at least it wasn't sewing on by hand! ;-)

The Viking foot comes with this little button grabbing tool. You squeeze it slightly and insert the prongs into the holes in the button. The tool expands a bit and the button is "stuck" on it until you squeeze the tool again to release it. This removes all the fiddly-ness from placing the buttons into the foot and in position over the fabric.

The foot itself has a "shelf" where you rest the button. When the presser foot is in the full down position, the button is sandwiched securely between the two layers of the foot. There is also a finger that can be moved in and out for creating thread shanks of varying height.

Here's the grabber tool still holding the button after I've put the button into the foot. I leave the tool in place until I put the foot down.

Here the foot is down and I'm ready to stitch. Pardon all the lint on my machine. It was cleaning day today and the machines all got a thorough going over, but not until after this photo was taken.

My machine has a specific button sewing stitch, which is basically a zigzag stitch set for the width between most button thread holes. I say "most" although I've not yet had a button for which this stitch wasn't perfect so maybe I should amend that to "all." It's a handy stitch and coupled with this foot, it's the answer for sewers like me who prefer not to sew on buttons by hand.

If you have a Viking, you must get this foot! If you don't have a Viking, other brands do have a similar foot and there are generics, but I don't think any of those come with the little grabber tool. (Please correct me if I'm wrong about that.)

You've now been enabled. Again. ;-)