I’ve nearly always loved buttons.* My button collection lives in two little jars.
(If you’re in the UK and interested in obtaining similar jars, these previously contained “Very lazy garlic” and “Very lazy ginger” from the English Provender Co. and have been extremely well cleaned to try and remove the smell of vinegar!)
I feel like I’m carrying on a tradition here (with the buttons, not trying to remove the smell of vinegar). My mum has a button collection, both my grandmothers had button collections, at least one of my great-grandmothers had a button collection and I’m sure the others did too. In my family, we tend to the practical side of button collecting and harvest buttons from old clothes or collect the spare buttons from new clothing. The majority of the buttons in my collection are shirt buttons harvested from Steven’s old shirts.
I spent some time recently hunting down all the unattached buttons I could find in the house to put them into the jars. The idea was that when I needed buttons in future they would be easy to find. Things frequently don’t work out the way I think they will so imagine my surprise when I needed buttons for my Lesia Loop and there were six matching buttons of just the right size and colour sitting in my jar. I love it when a plan comes together!
* There was a short period where I couldn’t stand the sight of them due to being forced to spend hours at a Brownie meeting randomly sewing them on to scrap fabric as practice.