New Sewing Machine

[Dunc]

Mad Stitcher, the buttonhole attachment moves the fabric for the zig zag for the buttonhole.  You can still buy the older buttonhole attachments for the old straight style Singers and Singer clones. 

Yeah, a YS-Star type attachment (easily found on eBay) makes buttonholes on an industrial straight-stitch machine. It comes with a blanking plate to cover the feed dogs, and the movement is entirely controlled by the attachment, which is actuated by the needle bar. Length, width, stitch spacing and cutting width can all be controlled. This video demonstrates: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NwNh99l8X50

[Hendrick]

Apart from the Bernina and Elna class zigzaggers and the Pfaff 130 and 260 class machines, I would go for a straight stitcher. They firm a nicer stitch and have narrower feed dogs; better for fine work. For buttonholes, I use an old Greist buttonholer, the one with the cams,  on my black Singers and it works perfectly. It even does eyelet buttonholes. I have a Brother computerised machine that I use for buttonholes only. It is a "fs 40", which sounds like an air to ground radar system but it sews. It is made almost enterelybfrom lunchbox-grade plastic and the sound if it is to make you cringe. I got it dead cheap from a discounter, lees than half the price of that Juki... My take; stick with that Husqvarna and find a creative solution for your buttonholes...

[Henry Hall]

Did the thread involve making shirts? I keep clicking back to find out but the browser is playing up and timing out.

If so then machined buttonholes are okay, because I likely wouldn't bother hand-sewing a load of shirt button-holes (perhaps for something special, but I've never tried it anyway). The satin stitch has to be good though or it just looks terrible and messy. I've seen some of the results of these on You Tube videos and they are often dire.

I've done them on my Pfaff 130 (as mentioned above by Hendrick) and the lines are close together and very neat. These are opened with a sharp chisel, which actually came in the accessories box from 1950 and was unused! In any case using a sharp chisel to open them is best.

With other button holes I'm always going for hand-made. Unless I had a top-of-the-range keyhole buttonholer, like a Reece, there's no way a machine buttonhole can be put an a handmade garment without wrecking the entire aesthetic. And what's the point of going to the trouble of hand-making a garment only to festoon it with blocky machine buttonholes which always look awful when cut?

[Hendrick]

Agreed, but... For me, shirts are a category of make by themselves... Nothing beats e Reece 101 eyelet buttonholer or even a Durkopp, for that matter. But only for  coat, suit and trouser, not for shirts in my opinion...