I’ve noticed that my pant buttons fall off a lot. They never used to. Either my pants are shrinking or the quality of button thread is not what it used to be. I guess I’ll go with the latter. Whatever the cause, it became apparent that sewing the buttons back on was the only way to salvage an otherwise perfect pair of pants. Now that I don’t live in my mom’s basement and my wife doesn’t do such things, I would sit on the couch with needle and thread and fix the button. On one such occasion, a guy friend called and asked what I was up to. Fearing ridicule, I thought of other things I could say that sounded a bit more “manly”. Cleaning my gun? Watching lesbian porn? Drinking shots of whiskey? I don’t own a gun and haven’t had whiskey in years and he knew it.
Somehow, it slipped out, “I’m sewing a button onto my pants.”
“Ah, hahahaha. What’s your wife doing? Changing your oil?”
I was silent. He continued, “You going to hem her skirts while your at it?”
After a couple of minutes of his laughing at me, I decided to go on a quest to find the perfect way to fix buttons without sewing them on. It’s not that I didn’t want to be made fun of, because being the short guy in elementary school had made me impervious to ridicule. I just wanted to have the same feeling fixing buttons that I did when I was, for instance, changing hardware inside of my computer, fixing a broken door, rotating my tires...
That’s when it hit me. I went to the fabric store and bought dungaree (jean) buttons. They were 6 for $2, so I bought $20 worth to avoid having to go back to the fabric store. Dungaree buttons are 2 pieces; a male and a female part. To “install” them on your pants, all you do is place either piece on opposite sides of your pants and tap them together.
I grabbed an old brick from the backyard and wrapped it in gray duct tape. This serves as the base of your button making machine. Using a claw hammer, you just pound them together. If the pants are thicker and difficult to punch through, placing a piece of wood on top of the brick using a very small drill-bit to cut through the pants will help. Or, you can use a thin nail to make a pilot hole. Once you’ve got your buttons installed, have a beer. Perferrbly something hoppy.
