A few months ago my aunt was nice enough to bring me a collection of buttons gathered by my grandmother. Grandma Betty was sort of a magical figure in my memories of childhood. Although she was gruff and smoked like a chimney she always had cookies in the pantry and some new outfit for our Barbies on her crochet hook. Craft was just a natural part of who she was. I can't remember a single visit where she didn't have some project laid out on her kitchen table. She and my Grandpa Jack loved going to the flea markets in Wisconsin, where they lived. Once I was along for the trip and Grandpa Jack bid on some mystery boxes! Grandma told me that the fun of it was that there could be anything in it and we wouldn't know until we won a box in the auction and opened it up! In my mind it would be full of beautiful old doll clothes and dress up outfits for me. I was so excited.
Of course, in the end, the mystery boxes were mostly full of raggy potholders and mismatched cutlery. But Grandma assured me that sometimes they "hit the jackpot!"
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| Grandpa Jack and Grandma Betty |
I've had Grandma Betty's button box for a few months. Mostly I've just opened a drawer and grabbed an odd button for a prototype I'm working on or stuffed a little bag of new buttons into its already full drawers. One night, a few weeks ago, I was too tired to work on anything after a long day so I decided to sort the whole thing and see if there weren't any treasures in there. The project was more of an undertaking that I planned, and truth be told, I'm still not finished sorting. The button box is full of odds and ends, missmatches and riffraff to weed out, but there are also dozens of tiny, imperfect mother of pearl buttons, each one its own special shade of white, ivory, cream, peach, most of them very old and worn down along one edge or another, impossible to match with any real degree of certainty.
There are plastic buttons from a child's garment shaped like ducks and one impossibly small cloth covered button in a charming white and red striped cotton. There are buttons with the cloth of a dress or jacket still attached to them.
My family is thrifty. It is a way of life handed down through generations of farmers and depression survivors. If a warn out item has nice, usable buttons they should be removed and stored for future attachment to something else. I am a deep believer in reuse as the vast majority of my sewn pieces are made from repurposed fabric and almost the sum total of my wardrobe is second hand. Sorting the button box feels like a chance to reconnect to the spirit my grandmother, of my family, of all the button savers and mystery box enthusiasts.
