Collecting Buttons – Some Tell Stories
June 28, 2009 by Mary Emma Allen
Filed under Home & Living
I had to get my button stash out today to find one for a shirt. The jar with common buttons held nothing spectacular, but this set me thinking about the buttons my daughter and I’ve collected over the years.
Image: sxc.hu
Some we’ve saved and some we’ve sold at our yard sales. However, buttons often tell a story about the clothing they’re on and occasions when it was worn. Also, if you’re a collector, buttons are reminiscent of the places where you found them.
I remember collecting buttons when we lived in Denver. My husband was attending airline pilots’ training, so our 2-year old daughter and I took walks around the area of our apartment for exercise and entertainment.
We made the acquaintance of the owner of a thrift store and stopped in almost daily for a chat. Here I browsed through her buttons, and she gave me those she didn’t want. She cut them from clothing no longer useful to her and added them to the button collection.
I did dressmaking for another button collecting friend. Miss Iva introduced me to the craft of sewing buttons onto fabric covered cardboard to make designs. She then framed these and hung them on the wall. My daughter, then 8-years old, was fascinated. So I tried doing this with my 4-H Club girls.
What crafts do you undertake with buttons? What stories do they tell?
I inherited my Granny’s button collection that I played with as a child. I was always fascinated with all the different shapes, sizes and colors. I wanted to share the buttons with my sisters as they had played with the button too as children. So, I bought medium size paper mache boxes and painted them my sisters favorite colors. Then I sponged on a darker shade of the color and white over the main color. I found magazine photos of things my sisters like and decoupaged then in the center of the lid leaving a 2″ area around the edge clear. Then I glued on buttons from the collection around the photos to make a frame. I gave these boxes to my sisters for Christmas. I now need to make one for myself.