Thursday, March 3, 2011

Buttons, Buttons Everywhere


I've always been a sucker for sewing notions, buttons included. So when my grandma offered me her cookie tin full of buttons, collected over a lifetime of frugally snipping "perfectly good" buttons from old clothes, I was happy to have them. In a fit of organization, I separated the whole batch by color (including white, pearl, and sparkly), placed each color in a baggie, and now feel like I never have to buy buttons again. Unless, of course, I see some really cool ones, like these shamrocks.



My mom has been doing some spring cleaning. (Did you know that February is spring in Arizona?) She sent me a giant box of notions that belonged to my grandmother, including some kind of weird boning I've never seen before, and spools and spools of peach colored bias tape. There was also a pretty blue envelope with some very small lumps in it. I thought they must be seeds, which was perfect because we were talking about the parable of the sower in church, and I could show the kids some real seeds!



So without opening the envelope - to increase the suspense - I took it to children's worship, and had everyone guess what was inside. "A bracelet!" "Candy!" "Raisins!" No one guessed seeds. Not even I guessed that I would open the envelope to find a collection of buttons! Fast on my feet (or maybe inspired by the Spirit), we pretended the buttons were seeds and planted them in the corner of the classroom, where they grew some really nice red and green apples.




I thought I would share some of the prettier and more unusual of these buttons with you. (The red dinosaur, above, was among those on the blue winter coat I had in the first grade. Even though stegosaurus buttons were very hard to do up, I loved them so much and was quite proud of them.) Hannah wanted to help, so I decked her out in one of her button barrettes I made last year (hot glue...you can do it too!), and got out the camera.



I was almost as surprised by her reaction as I was by the envelope of button-seeds!



Hannah had such a wonderful time looking at the different colors and shapes,



sorting,



and even creating a whole landscape with the buttons. This is a picture of Frosty the Snowman.



She made her own "button bow." Don't ask me how she got a button to stick to her hair, but she did!



As a matter of fact, as I type, nearly an hour later, she is still busy playing with buttons.

1 comment:

  1. Love it, love it, love it!
    My Grandma Imel used to make button bracelets and I have a couple of those that I'm glad were saved over the years.
    It's so fun to see kids playing creatively like this.

    ReplyDelete

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