Button Jar!

Emm-in-a-pickle

My mum had a button tin, some of my earliest childhood memories of play centre around that button collection! I was an only child, not lonely despite no cousins or playmates, no telly, but very imaginative (am in my late fifties now) and my greatest `treat` since before I could read at five and books became my best friends, mum`s buttons were how I learnt to count and sort groups, some of the `special` ones had names, I sorted them into `families`, and sizes, and used to play happily for ages with them. I remember having a little collection of box lids - date boxes were the `school bus`, shoe box lids were the school and the `special` buttons were the teachers.
When mum used buttons from her tin for garments, I`d rearrange my sorting, and when some garment met it`s end, new buttons entered my little `community`.
In MY button tin, some of those old buttons still survive. I have since added and taken from that collection, but I regard my collection as both a useful resource for practical purposes, and a kind of family album! I can recite (SAD!) the various garments that some of my buttons have adorned over half a century. Lovely buttons!

LJM

Taadaa wrote: »

I have a button box and a button jar. I am officially a greedy button witch.

you sound like me lol

CandyB101_2

rosalie-lavender wrote: »

Button people are fun to make. I have made them before with the children in the after school club I work in.
http://fabricleftovers.wordpress.com/2010/01/29/free-pattern-button-people/

Wow, love this idea, I too work in an afterschool club, will definately be trying these if we can collect a few more buttons :j

thriftymoo

ive got a button jar and a bead jar! I've got loads of different ones hehe

Trinny

Hello all

After years of having a sewing kit made up of freebie hotel kits and nothing else:o - yes i know!!! i have inherited a proper sewing kit and a button jar.

This means OH will finally get his clothes repaired with matching thread:rotfl:and means that if he looses a button - i have a fighting chance now of being able to replace it.

Trin

hermum

luxor4t wrote: »

mop = mother of pearl, like this:

http://www.cst.cmich.edu/users/dietr1rv/zoogems/mother-buttons.JPG

I've got quite a few from my gran's button collection and these days you can find them again, sometimes on ethnic style clothing

OOOhhhh are they your buttons? I love them.
My Nans button tin was thrown away as Grandad didn't think that anyone would want them.
She wasn't a sewer, as in a person who sews, :rotfl:but she had a lovely big wicker work box, made by the blind where she's worked. I loved that work box.
I don't however recall any buttons as beautiful as your link.

Ballymackeonan

I started a hunt through my button box yesterday - for four buttons to finish off a wooly jumper for the OH. I ended up having to put 4 buttons of different shades of brown on it, and I think it works (he hasn't seen it yet....)

But I kept being distracted by memories. The button collection started with my grandmother - in her day, clothes were worn until they fell apart, and then the buttons and zips were salvaged before they went.. the days before CSs! There are several sets of big 1950s buttons from her coats, and two beautiful square mother of pearl ones wth carving, I'll have to save those for a special project!

There were the buttons off my mother's favourite bottle green raincoat, one off a coat I wore when I was about 10 (it was blue tweed, with a velvet collar, and I remember feeling very stylish!) and buttons off cardis. None of my dad's - but plenty of spare shirt buttons!

mumofjusttwo

I keep many of the buttons that come from coats that my children have worn. I then use them on scrapbook pages with photos of the wearing the said items.

Naide

I love memories like these. I remember raiding both my mother's and grandmother's button boxes. My mum died in 2006 and we had all gathered at my step-father's flat one year to the day my mum died. On the table, right there in front of me, was my mum's old button tin. Both my two sisters and myself, oohed and aaahed at this button tin. We raided it, sat and laughed and cried at some of the memories brought up by various buttons. My mum made a lot of our clothes when we were little and there were buttons from our old dresses, etc. It was a lovely day in that respect. They've passed the legacy on and I have a button jar now! There are buttons from my boys' clothes from when they were little. I wonder if my boys will do the same - raid through and laugh at the memories.

CH27

I spent hours playing with my grandma's button box. 30 years later I still have some of the in my sewing tin as I can't bear to part with them.

I find I don't get many buttons now as I send clothes to be recycled.