You know how sometimes you go to the fabric store for one thing (okay, so like ten things, but not all of them were for me, I swear) and while you’re there you find the perfect fabric for a project you didn’t even know you wanted to make? So that happened the other day and now I have a new sweatshirt wrap skirt.

I’d originally planned to fold over the top and run some elastic through, but it turns out a yard is exactly the right width to wrap around me with plenty of overlap, and also i have a pretty enormous collection of buttons, so I thought it would be fast and fun to just graphics a couple of pretty buttons and make a couple of buttonholes and Bob’s you’re uncle.

I picked out a pretty purple velvet button for the “visible” button (which no one will ever see because it’s not a really fitted skirt and also I kind of fucked up the waistband because I’m a lazy sewer and I knew no one would ever see it anyhow) and a flat mother of pearl button for the inside. Then I sat down at the machine and put the right foot on and adjusted all the settings and…nothing. I mean, not “nothing”, but no buttonhole, just a knot.

Consulted manual, made minor adjustments, still nothing but knots. Thankfully, I was testing on scrap fabric so my skirt was still intact. Now, of course I’d already decided to wear this skirt — this one, not some other skirt — tomorrow, and I’m leaving for Boston first thing, so I needed to get it done.

So I bit the bullet and handsewed the damn buttonholes. I hate hand sewing. Hate it. But I have to say, doing buttonholes wasn’t nearly as bad as, say, hemming pants. And they’re not the prettiest thing I ever sewed, but I think they came out okay.