Back to Simplicity 1540

I didn't do any knitting in the past few days, as it turned out. Today I did get back to sewing; I've been doing the buttonholes on Simplicity 1540. First I machine-sewed them, but then I went and decided to hand-work them over that. As of halfway through the first, I regretted it, but it's too late to go back now. I'm glad there are only 3, and I do think the result will at least look better than the machined versions would have. About that:

• This pattern recommends several fabrics with some give or stretch to them. Unless you do something to prevent it, ordinary machine-made buttonholes in such fabrics will stretch out, if not as soon as you sew them, certainly as you use them over time. They are made of zigzag stitches, which have give to them, and the fact that there's a cut edge right through the buttonhole doesn't help either. Cording the buttonhole is a good idea. Backing just the buttonhole area with a woven fusible (on straight or crossgrain) would probably help too.
• I made my machine buttonholes, cut them open, then did the hand work over that. Works OK, though a straight stitch around the buttonholes would have been faster, had I already been sure I was going to hand-work them.
• For the hand work, I started out with the same heavy white thread I'd been using for the topstitching, but decided that the mass of the white stitches was obviously too white compared to the fabric and the effect of the single lines of topstitching. If my buttons had had white in them, it might've been OK, but I decided to undo the white buttonhole and use my normal sewing thread (a pale aqua) doubled instead. A thicker thread and wider stitch might have looked better.
• Those two button tabs I cut out? I still haven't decided if I'll use them, but if I did, I'd have to make two more buttonholes, which I'm not exactly dying to do.