Buttons

It amazes me all the twists and turns that one can take just looking at someone else's blog and following links to favorite blogs of theirs. This morning, I happened upon a glorious site called Button Floozies-- wonderful photos of beautiful buttons of every shape and color, lots of antique buttons, and plenty of creative projects using buttons. It makes me long for a lazy afternoon of strolling through antique stalls in search of button treasure! Please click over and visit. The Button Floozies have inspired me to show you my button collection and some of the things I've done with button embellishment.

My MaMa (my mother's mother) was the seamstress in my family and I've written about her before. She died in 1969 when I had just begun to get interested in sewing. Luckily, my mother had the foresight to save all her sewing things for me including her large button collection. The box above I decorated for my PaPa one Christmas. All the buttons were from MaMa's collection. When PaPa died in 1980, the box was returned to me. It is one of my dearest treasures.

Some of MaMa's buttons were still on the cards and I saved many of them for years. This is one of the last ones left. Note the price!

Since most of the button embellishment I do is based on color, that's how I've chosen to store my buttons.

This is the first button nest I ever made. When I went to the IQA show in Houston in the late '90's, I saw a man's vest that had been embellished with doilies and lace and buttons, so I came home and liberated a vest from Jim's closet that he never wore and made my own.

On that same visit to Houston, I found a really unique vest pattern and made my first crazy pieced vest. Above is the nest of red buttons...

..and this is the green one.

And this is the latest button nest from my fancy pink, black, and white crazy pieced apron. In closing, I will leave you with a fantastic quote from Ringo Starr:
"America: It's like Britain, only with buttons."

Happy St. Patrick's Day

On this day when everyone is Irish, I wish you a happy and safe St. Patrick's Day and offer some views of my crazy pieced vest made for the day. This was actually the first of these vests that I made. I had done the counted cross-stitch shamrock and was casting around for something to do with it other than doorknob art.

This was my first attempt to use beads and I really like the little bead worms around the meandering chain stitch.

The shibori circles may have made their first appearance in this vest, as well. It also features fabrics other than all cotton because I had scraps left from making my mother-in-law a leprechaun doll.