I was only looking for 3 white buttons

On Friday evening after work, I decided I was going to finish up my Briar Rose Jumper (finally, right?!) and pick out some white buttons for it from my stash.

What started as a three button search, turned into a mass organization project…

And the right side of the table…

Somewhere during my white-button search, I thought to myself “Gee, wouldn’t it be great if I had all of my buttons paired together somehow so I never have to search through jars of random buttons ever again, looking for x number or x color?!”

About this time my husband came home and glanced over at my sewing table *ahem* dining room table, and just chuckled to himself.  And as he’s chuckling, I realized I’m now further away from finishing my Briar Rose Jumper than I was an hour ago, and all I had to do was sew on a few buttons and weave in some stray yarn ends.  heh

Moving along on my Friday evening, I remembered that Jenny of Kerrfect had just made a post on Sew Retro last week about some vintage button backing printables she’s made available for free!!  Isn’t that so generous of her?!  So I took to my printer and made about 4 printed pages of the button backings (as much as my printer’s ink would allow) and set to work on putting my buttons on these cute vintage backings.

As you can see my printer was really unhappy with me and created some weird lines across my cute backings.  But I wasn’t going to let that deter me from my new organization project.  :)

The two button sets on the left both have posts on the back, so I used an awl to pierce holes in the paper to stick the posts through.  The yellow and green buttons are both made of some type of plastic material and the cream ones beneath them on the right are made of bone (I’m almost certain).  They have a very different weight and feel than the rest of my buttons and are quite old.

I have an array of buttons in my stash.  Some are from my mom’s collection from the 60’s, 70’s, and 80’s.  Plus, I have a few separate collections from different places, and found some buttons that are much earlier than the 60’s (I’m thinking at least the 30’s and 40’s).

My favorite ones in this set are  the little blue and green flowered ones on the upper right; those came from my mom’s stash.

I wasn’t able to fit all of my buttons on these backings, since I ran out of ink on my printer.  So I had to resort to making my own baggies for them.  Although they’re quite unattractive, I refused to mix the buttons together again after sorting them out for several hours.

I just cut regular snack sized baggies up and tapped the sizes.  I do hope to move all of my buttons onto some backings at some future point, but for now these fit the bill.

After sitting for so long purely matching buttons up, I had to pick out a few of my favorites to show you guys.

I came across this navy set of buttons (in the middle), which look like flowers, and thought how perfect they would be in my fall wardrobe (for my navy and white theme).  Also, I adore rhinestones!  The buttons in the upper right corner are probably my ultimate-favorite in my whole stash.

They’re so heavy and shiny…. perfect for a wool coat that only needs 4 buttons.

Here’s a detailed shot of the navy buttons too.  (It’s just hard to see some of the details in the larger picture above.)

I finished packing up all of these buttons on Saturday afternoon and luckily they all fit into one box.

I truly have no idea how I fit them all together, but I’m glad I was able to.  The only downside to making one’s space organized (sometimes) is the need for more space to house all of the individual containers needed to keep everything separate.

And, yes!!! I finally did manage to find the perfect, white buttons I needed for my Briar Rose Jumper after all of this.  :)

 

In: Sewing

Blogger for 6 years and counting, I am a passionate creator who loves to tinker.

Comments (6)