Button, Button, I've Got the Buttons

For as long as I can remember I have been sorting buttons or watching my mother sort buttons. I have fond memories of individual buttons with personalities. The yellow and white striped block that reminds me of cheese is a favorite, and I remember the stories of buttons as I see them: The brown engraved quadrilateral  from my mother's old coat, the red dinosaurs from when cutesy animal shaped buttons were a thing.
When I was very young my mother had her deeply personal stash of buttons in a brown Currier and Ives tin with a sleighing scene on it. When we needed one we would shake out all the buttons and find something suitable. Then the buttons my great grandmothers and great-greats had saved through the Great Depression and earlier found their way south in glass jelly jars, strung on safety pins, and looped onto snarls of cotton from before the advent of polyester filament sewing threads. They were like proud but shabby refugees and political asylum seekers narrowly escaping estate sales and dumpsters.

Every button from every shirt had been saved alongside upholstery buttons popped off of sofas, wooden toggles from wool coats, heavy powdery handfuls of mother of pearl, and the royalty: timeless Czech glass, and elderly rhinestones working free of their glued settings.

The late 80s and early 90s not being a time to slum it in vintage, my mother also purchased bagged lots of bright plastic buttons and bells she crocheted onto the edges of crew socks she sold for extra cash.

We sorted and sorted.
We sorted those buttons by material: Wood, leather, horn, shell, and plastic.
We sorted them by color.
We sorted them by the number of their holes.
We sorted them into Ziplock bags.

In my tweens my family moved to a house with a laundry room full of drawers and cabinets. With joy we sorted the bags into drawers. Over time getting a button became a kind of smash and grab affair. The plastic bags, which had grown dusty and semi opaque, were no longer closed properly and the contents of the drawers started to mingle.

I moved away for college and started my own personal stash of buttons neatly threaded on tough nylon thread and kept in cotton wool lined vintage jewelry boxes and tins. Then one day it was time for my parents to turn over a new leaf and move. Did I want the buttons? Of course.

They came to me in their plastic bags stuffed into a box and liberally besprinkled with paillettes and seed beads. While I was pregnant with Thacia it seemed like a good idea to sort them so that I wouldn't have to do it later with an infant about. Ah, the naiveté of first time motherhood! I did get a great many of them sorted, but I swear the buttons multiply in the dark. Every time I think I have finally sorted the white buttons I find another huge bag to compare with the drawers of buttons already strung, and the happy congregation of singletons.

Since October I have been setting up my new studio space very slowly. I had a spot carved out in the basement and it was just too dark for me, so we played musical chairs with the house, combining the living room and dining room together to make a creative space in the former dining room. It is awesome, but that is a side note. As we brought another load of stuff out of the basement space this weekend I looked at the ranks of drawer sets and tackle boxes that hold my legacy of buttons in some semblance of order. I wonder if this is the year they will be conquered, and the last of the plastic bags emptied? As Daniel points out, I've never been closer!

I'm a little more organized in some respects than my mother, so my children probably won't spend as much time up to their elbows in buttons.
Will they have relationships with these buttons like I have, or will the buttons just be a utility for them? What new stories will we make together as we add my great grandmothers' buttons to our new creations?      

Heirloom Sewing Cheats

There's irony in the fact that I developed a certain taste for children's clothing in college, but I am still paying for that education so I can't afford to indulge my whims for high end Italian knits and Dutch design. I do know how to sew it, but now that I actually have children I don't have much time to sew. 

So I cheated, and I'm not ashamed. I used a secondhand cotton tablecloth. No fancy computerized sewing machine, no hours of backbreaking labor or marking, no pricey embroidery software, just a stained tablecloth and the simplest of sewing patterns.

The foundation appeal is a simple, timeless design that lets the embroidery details speak for themselves. All the charm needs room to breathe! An addition of collar, petticoat, full puff sleeve, or sash would be too much. I made my own pattern, but I like this and this too.

It has an empire waist with embroidery, gathered and embroidered skirt with scalloped hem, long fitted sleeve puffed at the wrist and embroidered, and narrow back button closure with tiny vintage milk glass buttons.

I cheated.

Go therefore, and cheat likewise. You'll be mother of the year for providing your daughter with pretty dresses, wife of the year for doing it on a serious budget, and you'll still have time for the family with all the time you don't have to spend at the sewing machine to do it! 

How To: Make a Consistent Buttonhole Manually

It has always seemed unfair to me that great projects are so easily ruined at the end with tricky steps. Flights end with landings, fashion drawings end with faces, and cooking ends with seasoning. By far the worst, in my opinion, is that garments end with buttonholes. Knowing I need to make buttonholes has tanked whole weeks for me, in all seriousness!

There are a few solutions for buttonholes: Technology, avoidance, and mastery.

Many of the new sewing machines will make an automatic buttonhole for you. They are almost foolproof. If you are lucky, you live in a city with buttonhole services. You give the nice man your placket and in a few hours you have a parade of industry-grade beauties. Neither of these are an option for me, because I insist on having a reliable machine that does basic functions well every time. This means no tricky computerized gadget I can’t pull apart myself, no functions I will never use, no automatic buttonhole. Also, I don’t work or think far enough in advance to send my plackets away.

Avoidance, though. That I have mastered for years! You would believe what can be closed with zippers, snaps, velcro, ribbons, loops, or hooks and eyes to avoid the vortex of buttonhole despair only because you too, dear reader, have avoided this battle!

Mastery. I have tried the techniques. I have avidly sought wisdom in Threads and come up dry. Because of course those who do couture sewing have machines which are to the seamstress as Alfred is to Batman. Or not.

So here is my anxiety-reducing low tech technique for professional-looking buttonholes every time (once you get the hang of them). Really. It won’t win you any speed records, but think about how many times you’ve redone a buttonhole until the fabric is worn and fuzzy, and tell me your way is faster!

1. Measure and mark the length of the opening of your buttonhole carefully and precisely onto your placket.
   
2. Set your machine to a short straight stitch and sew exactly the same number of stitches on each marked buttonhole line. Yes, I do mean count, and walk it if you need to. Hint: It is easy to lose the end of the mark. Make sure you have good natural light, and it might help you to turn the sewing machine light off to reduce glare.
   
3. Use an Exacto knife or razor blade to slit along the right-hand edge of the stitching.
   
4. Set your stitch width to a narrow zigzag and the length to a satin stitch. I like my length comparatively long to avoid rogue bulges and bumps, but this is a matter of preference.
   
5. Position your buttonhole with the needle swung to the right at the center of the slash, just a hair above where it begins. Satin stitch down the left edge of the cut with the needle plunging into the slit on its right extreme. End with needle down in the fabric swinging to the right, a hair above the bottom of the slit.
   
6. Raise the presser foot and turn the fabric. Sew up the second edge of the slit ending with the needle having just completed its left-hand extreme.
   
7. Trim all threads and treat with fray check or a drop of clear nail polish as needed.
   
8. Carefully measure the width of the buttonhole and stitch width for exactly that amount. Bar tack on each end of the buttonhole a count of 4 stitches, or whatever looks right for your project. Leave threads long enough to thread a hand-sewing needle.
   
9. Tie the threads of your bar tack and hide them with a needle.