Buttons

This afternoon I've been playing with my mother's button tin.
I guess I haven't done this for a few decades but there's still something irresistible about sorting through the different shapes, colours and sizes and remembering the stories that go with them.

This particular button tin is at least 56 years old. My mother and her friends used to cut buttons off garments when they had finished with them, rather than throw them away.

This black button was from the coat my mother wore when she left Newcastle as a young bride to travel to Hobart. It was a coat with a single feature button - I suspect it would be very trendy today if she still had it.

The gold one is from another overcoat - I think I remember this one as a mustardy gold colour, and hairy! It's one of four.

These buttons were from my mother's wedding dress. She removed them before dyeing the dress pale green to use as a party dress - money was tight. When she wore her wedding dress in 1953 it caused a sensation, being made of the new fabric polyester!

Here are some other buttons that I particularly like:

I don't keep my buttons in a tin. They're in dozens of small plastic packets that have been attached to garments I've bought recently. I keep them in a plastic box, and on the bedside table, and in the bathroom cupboard - depending on where I happen to be when I remove the spare button.

I know that if I ever do need one of them it probably won't be in any of those places. 

And buttons in plastic packets are no substitute for rummaging through an old tin of buttons, history and memories.