The Button Box

When I was a little girl, my grandmother had an old treadle sewing machine in the bedroom where I slept when I stayed with her.  On the pedal of that machine she kept a black tin box with pink flowers.  Inside were buttons.  Grandma would snip off buttons from old shirts and dresses that had worn out or were too small. She removed the buttons from clothing that she would cut up for rags or for quilt pieces.  When she purchased a card of buttons for a new garment, she would add the extras to the button box.

I loved to look through the button box.  When she was teaching me to sew, I would try to find just the right button to add to a skirt or a shirt that I had made.  What intrigued me, at the age of 10, was that each button had a story.  She would pull out a big blue button and tell me that it came off of a suit that my great-grandfather wore to Quaker Meeting.  A bright pink button was salvaged from a dress my mother wore when she was a little girl.  Another yellow button shaped like a new chick was from a romper I wore when I was a toddler.

Years ago I found a jar that was made into a lamp, added a cute shade, and it eventually made its way into our sunroom.  However, from the very beginning of using the lamp, I began to fill the jar with buttons.  While I don't cut them from old garments, I do take them from the extra buttons that are attached to new pieces of clothing.  When I add buttons to a new garment that I have made, the extras go into the button jar.    Over the years the collection has grown and the jar is nearly full.

I haven't told my grandsons about the buttons---I doubt that they would find the stories interesting.  But when Tessa reaches the age where she will notice the pretty buttons on a dress or a shirt that she is wearing, when she sits in the sunroom with me telling me about her new adventures, she may notice the jar of buttons and ask about how different they are.  Then I can tell her the stories about her great-great-grandmother's button box and how the button jar got its start.