I'm a little confused. A picture of buttonholer and box might help. Do you have a manual for it? If you take the buttonholer off and rotate the hand wheel by hand does the needle strike the feed dog cover? I have a couple of Greist in the tan box (and some others, too) The ones in the tan box that say Rotary Buttonholer are for a low shank and should work with the 285.
If you post pictures, they usually have to be resized. If you want you can email them to the address that I gave you in the PM that I sent you this morning and I would be happy to resize if needed and post them for you.
Janey - Neat people never make the exciting discoveries I do.