Button Band Blues

Sewing buttons on two new sweaters has brought to my attention that my button band skills are sorely in need of improvement. Some of my problem is an inability to evenly space buttons or buttonholes along a sweater front. Maybe because the mental connection that there should be the same number of stitches between buttonholes was just made today. Duhhhhhh. But beyond the problems caused by flexible math, it seems like there should be some knitting tricks out there for better button bands. Maybe someone can point me in the right direction or recommend a resource. 

Here's the skinny on badly behaving button bands and some poorly lit photos.

On the Fair Enough cardigan I picked up along the edge, knit a one by one rib and used yarn over buttonholes. Then the band was finished off with an invisible one by one cast off for a nicer finish. The result is that the button band seems to floppy and the yarn over buttonholes stretch and gape in an unsatisfactory way when buttoned. 

On my little birds cardigan I tried something a bit different to try to counteract some of the problems in Fair Enough. The band was picked up along the edge and was knit in the beaded ribbing pattern used in the rest of the sweater. Once the band width was reached a purl turning row was knit and then 8 rows of stockinette finished with a 3 needle bind off on the inside. For the buttonholes 3 stitch one row holes (from interweave appendix) were made on both the right side and facing side. The problem is the extra buttonhole stitches make the the band edge bulge out, which only gets worse when actually buttoned. 

Does anyone have some advice they could pass along? Oh and I promise nice modeled FO shots of these sweaters later in the week if you promise not to stare at my buttonholes. :)