Sliding Buttonhole Foot--Pfaff 1475

The sliding buttonhole foot is one type of buttonhole foot.  It came with my Pfaff 1475 (on right) I obtained late 1991 and with my Riccar 808E obtained late 1978. (on left)

The red arrow indicates where the buttonhole will begin.  As you stitch the slider moves and the calibrated lines will help determine the buttonhole length.

How is this buttonhole length determined?  Many times I've read to put a tape measure around the button.  What?  A better idea would be to put a string around the button, then measure the string.

I have a different way of doing it which I have been using since the early 80s.

An old piece of scrap fabric was used upon which I stitched buttonhole to the lengths of each red mark and the half red ones.

It doesn't have to be anything fancy.  This was done on scrap fabric and buttonholes were mainly for length, not beauty.  After all,, no one else was going to see this but me. Ha!

Just slip the button through the buttonholes until the perfect size is found, then stitch the buttonhole to that length.

The Pfaff 1475 has fully automatic as well as semi-automatic buttonholes.  To determine which length of buttonhole to program in, use the strip for the button.  You will need to know how the red marks translate to metric as that is how most Europeon machines are programmed.  For example, notch 4 1/2 is 20 mm; notch 6 1/2 is 28 mm.

When using semi-automatic buttonholes on the Pfaff 1475 use 150 flashing.  When the first side reaches the length you want, proceed with the rest of the buttonhole.

For more accuracy and control I tend to use the semi-automatic mode as opposed to the fully automatic ones.  For years I've said that I should make a similar strip for my Pfaff 1475, but there is really no need as the red marks are the same on both buttonhole feet.

As usual, click on the pictures to enlarge.

Pattern Making Systems

Pattern Making Systems allow a person to make just about any garment to his/her size.  The two most popular are Lutterloh  www.Lutterloh.com and Sure-Fit Designs. SureFitDesigns.com .

There have been others along the way. The American Way to True-Fit Patterns was apparently connected to Lutterloh in some way.  Recently I found the same outfits in same pose, in a Lutterloh manual for sale at ebay. There was a True-Fit (Lutterloh) in Florida, but that has been inactive for a few years.

I've been told that Sure-Fit developed as a result of Dusan's Magic Fit but am not certain. on this.


Using a special tape measure, you measure yourself, then make dots to correspond with the numbers given

on the pattern, in a radiating fashion,
then connect the dots.











This is the pattern for this outfit.  (I've covered the numbers, because of copyrights.)

This True-Fit (manual only) was $2 at an estate sale.  The original credit card

receipt was there and the entire kit
cost $40 in 1977.  Yes, the styles are a "bit" dated but there are always
some patterns which can be used.  There are 8 patterns missing, but, for $2, I'm not going to get too upset.















The Perfect Fit ($8) I recognize from magazine ads of the era.

This system is similar to the others, with its own special tape.  It also has "trans dart" template (for moving darts), where were actually there!  Missing are front and back armhole curve templates as well as a French curve, but I have those from other sources.

 These (hopefully) will fit in my Master Plan which is to have a few basic patterns from which many designs can be made.

The wonderful thing about these systems is that one would need to fit them  only once, then just tweek other patterns made from the same pattern.

Hopefully, I'll have more on these systems later in the year.

Has anyone used any of these systems and care to share their experiences with them?

Internet Disconnects

For several months I kept getting disconnects on my laptop.  Sometimes hours would go by and I stayed connected; sometimes I would get disconnected several times in an hour.  It got to be quite annoying.  Was it my laptop, my browser, my ISP (DSL), my modem/router?

The laptop was ruled out since I was able to stay connected when on a wired connection with a different ISP (cable).

The browser was ruled out because somehow it was updated to IE11.

The ATT Boards, where several others were complaining, suggested checking the phone line filters.  I made certain they were functional, clean, and the little metal part was intact.

Others suggested to re-set the modem which helped a bit.

It was down to my ISP or the modem/router which is now 4 years old.  The thought of waiting for a replacement and being without the internet is not a pleasant one.

Then I read somewhere to get a replacement for the surge protector.  It was worth a try, especially since ours is about 12 years old.  I doubt that they would get worn out, but possibly something else is involved.  Ours is on a carpet (fibers) near an open window (dust), and just plain dust getting in the outlet holes.

The store was out of the one I wanted but I picked up one with more outlets.  What's great about it is that you can cover the unused outlets, it has two outlets for those large converter plugs, and you can plug in your phone line if desired.

I would have been happy if this new surge surpressor improved my connection by 25%.  I am very happy that after several weeks of use, the improvement was at least 75%!

If you're having internet disconnects, try one, or more, of the tests above.  It's so nice to have  mostly uninterrupted internet service! :)


Note:  I have been trying for weeks to post the above.  It wasn't the words that were giving me a problem, but the pics.  They would upload, I could click on Add, but nothing happened, plus I couldn't X out the page.  Checking with Help let me know that this has been a problem since January.  I tried their suggestions, finally deleting cookies.  That didn't work either.  They were saying that they don't support IE 11.  What?  

Another of their suggestions was to download Chrome.  So, it's "We won't let it work unless you use our product"?  I guess that's it because I finally downloaded Chrome and it's worked like a charm.