How to Sew on a Button

[internationalist]

I tried to search for this term, nothing found. Not sure if LL is the right forum to ask about how to repair your clothes, at least how to sew a few buttons, but why not?

Sure, I can Google for it and it gives hundreds of results, but here is where it gets confusing!

The Art of Manliness (nice site in general, but average) suggest the X-sewing style (see pictures):
http://www.artofmanliness.com/2012/06/2 ... -a-button/

Bonne Gueule (in French) reports of an enhibition of high-end, bespoke Italian shirts, the photos feature II-stlye (see pictures): http://www.bonnegueule.fr/when-in-rome- ... de-qualite

Anyways, I want to fix the buttons of not a shirt for now, but a pair of (Dockers) khaki pants. I cannot refer at the moment to a trusted source such as Gentlemen by Bernhard Roetzel; I have to resort to the Internet.

Which is the proper way to do it; for pants/jackets and shirts alike? Maybe both styles are OK, they just represent different styles.

[bengal-stripe]

Most buttons are stitched-on by machine, so the cotton thread can either be parallel or crosswise. If a button on your Dockers has come off, just copy the way the other buttons have been done. If the buttons are stitched on by hand, you also have the choice of a "crow's foot" pattern (quite popular with bespoke shirt-makers), which, as far as I know, cannot be done by machine.

[derekguy]

I was told by my shirtmaker that there are Juki machines now that can sew a crows foot stitch. You just need the right machine and computer board for it.