My friend Marilyn told me, with a laugh, that her mother used to take the buttons off her fathers worn out shirts before she turned them into cleaning rags.
Can you believe women used to bother to do that?
I must have produced my best dolt look. Don't you save the buttons from your husband's shirts?
I hadn't realized until then, that I've kept a habit that others associate with Depression-era hardship. As far as I'm concerned a button in the hand is worth two on a card, especially when it comes to having to drive twenty plus minutes just to buy six or seven plain white blouse or shirt buttons. I say, bring me your old, your tired shirts with buttons burning to be freed from their old threads. Those, of course, are the practical buttons, the ones I recycle from Dave's old button-up-the-front standard men's shirts.
Then there are the dreamy buttons I drip through my fingers, for the sheer pleasure of feeling the sheen and admiring the gorgeous designs. Those buttons are the girls I sew onto bags and purses, stitch brooch-like onto the top neckline of a shirt or jacket, or affix to the pocket of a blouse for maximum effect.
On our family vacation into the Cascades and Canada we squeezed in one day in the capital city of British Colombia, Victoria. Could I miss some kind of sewing related activity there? Well, I almost did. I got lost looking for Gala Fabrics (There's always next time, right?) but then I found myself (almost) walking past the Button & Needlework Boutique. There I got to immerse myself in a gorgeous collection of pure dreamery'esque buttons. And it turned out to be a durn good thing that I missed out on Gala Fabrics, because I spent over 60 Canadian dollars on beautiful buttons in about ten minutes. We are talking major embellishment potential. It's amazing what they pack into a small store, and the merchandise bears very little resemblance to the cards on the racks at my local Joannes. Can't wait to decide what blouses, purses and vests are going to sport these delightful ladies.
If we have buttons like these in California, I've never found them.
