Tuesday, February 12, 2008

Thrifted Buttons



Five dollars of thrifted clothing equals 55 mother-of-pearl buttons:



My favorites are three metal buttons that I pilfered from an ugly orange linen shirt -- they appear to be the ends of old spoons with shanks attached to the back:



Button-gleaning is my new favorite hobby, helped in large part to some much-needed closet clearing in our household. In fact, I think I have so many buttons now that I need a new way to store them! Any suggestions for button storage?

4 comments:

  1. That's really a great idea! I always seem to be lacking buttons, yet it's never occurred to me to get them off of otherwise undesirable items at the thrift store!

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  2. I hope you find some treasure (in the form of buttons, of course!) on your next jaunt to the thrift store! We're supposed to recycle, right?

    Yours in Christ,
    Shannon

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  3. BUTTON JARS!! Use a canning jar, or any other kind of clear glass jar with a lid (if you can get them clean, things like jelly jars, or pickle jars are fun to use because of the variety of shape and style!)...you can either sort by size, or color, or not at all, simply filling one jar at a time. These look *so* pretty all lined up, and it makes a fun game of dumping the buttons out on your bed/sewing table/floor/cookie sheet so that you can sort through them and see what you have that matches, or could be used on your project.

    I've also heard of people storing them in tackle boxes (like for fishing), or those nuts and bolts type of drawer organizers that you find at hardware stores... let us know what you decide to do! Storage is always the trickiest part of sewing, isn't it?

    ~Tilly

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  4. Ah, Tilly stole my idea! LOL! Actually, I was going to suggest canning jars or jelly jars..they are so pretty sometimes.

    I would think too that bead or thread boxes would work as well:-)
    Oh, yes and my Mom used to use old tins. If you go to an antique shop or thrift store you can easily find these.

    I love sorting through my buttons...I may do that tonight and now I have an idea of what I can do with the shirts I bought at the thrift store that just didn't look right when I got home!

    Have a blessed day!
    Sommer

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