Thanks for the help. Tom, I hadn't even considered that something was not right with the button hole attachment. I'll check that out. My machine is old (1958) but it's not straight stitch only. I have the machine manual and the buttonhole manual. I read both of the completely. The manual does say to use the feed dog cover plate but I also read online that I can by pass that and drop the feed dogs.
I don't see anything in the manual about changing machine settings, but I thought I remembered that. Off to play with the buttonhole attachment now.
Edited to add this link. This is the same text as my buttonhole manual. This is where someone said I could drop the feed dogs instead of using the cover plate.
http://www.theweebsite.com/sewing/to...ttonholer.html