i love buttons, especially antique ones.

I have more buttons than I should even admit to.

I like buttons too, never saw one i didn't like!!!i especially like the pearlized ones, or something unusual. my granddaughter, when she was little would count all the same color ones , or seperate all the same color . !!!!

I love buttons and just bought a batch at yard sale ($4) a couple weeks ago. I went through them and found the interesting ones and passed along the rest (the majority) to another quilter. By and large most buttons are uninteresting (see the front of your husband's shirts) but every now and then you get a button that says something to you other than (I can keep this gap closed ;-) )

When I was a child Mother saved every button, even from Daddy's work shirts. If a garment wore out, she clipped off the buttons and saved them in her button jars. This was because there was no room for waste of any kind in our house. Every little scrap of fabric was saved for quilts, some of the larger ones made into aprons. Most of it was feedsack. I loved playing with Mother's button jar while she sewed on her Singer treadle machine. Later on my daughter too sat beside her grandmother playing with her button collection. I still love buttons. I have a friend who created a beautiful lamp by filling an old quart jar with buttons for the base of the lamp, then decorated the shade with others. She wouldn't part with it for any price. I'll bet you would have many takers should you offer to share your buttons you don't want.

I use lots of buttons on my crazy quilts!

I think of buttons as being special connections from the past, sort of like antique quilts. Someone "collected" and saved them from another era. I don't know...I just like buttons, too. They seem to have little personalities and are a representation of the lives of those who sewed and went before us on this journey.

i collect fancy buttons, cats, cars, dogs, flowers ect and make things with them. i can't pass up a cute button

if you don't want your PLAIN or FANCY buttons, pm me i'll take them, i love the wreath idea, don't have any plain buttons, i put the fancy on magents and little gifts

Treasures!

I love the wreath idea! Buttons were always one of the favorite items when I was teaching kindergarten and pre-K. Kids would sit and sort them in so many different ways and we used them for counting also. They also used them in House Center to make different foods - cakes, stews, you name it, they created it with buttons and imagination.
So you might want to check into donating them to an area school.

When my granddaughter was small and wanted "to sew" with me, I would get my buttons out and we would find the duplicate buttons. I would thread a 6 strand embroidery floss, on a smaller tapestry needle..not much of a sharp point, knot the end, and let her "string on the matching buttons". When finished just tie and cut, and then you have matching buttons already together when you need them. She loved doing that!! And, we had "together" time. Good memories....now that she is 21!!

I used buttone to tac a small lap quilt and it worked great.

I like to shop for unusual buttons with the idea of making earrings. Just file the loop off the back, glue a post on & you have a pr. of original pierced earrings. I don't tell where they came from, ha!

I use vintage buttons to embellish many of my quilts, especially mini's or wall hangings.

the wreath is cute !!!

I examine jars of buttons looking for antique or very different ones. One halloween when my daughter was choosing her costume for the parade and costume competition we dicided that dressed as a cotumemonger (spelling) or "pearleys" an English tradition where these people had clothing was covered with buttons would e fun. We glued thousands of white buttons on a full long shirt, a jacket, a straw hat and a mask. (October in New Hampshire is cold) It was a great costume and it was fun to hear the buttons sometimes fall on the street as she walked. Speaking of falling, I had a box of buttons that I was taking to my son's nursery school for collage activities. As I drove to the school and was turning a corner I heard his shhhhhhhhhhhhhh on the road. I had left the box of buttons on the top of the car and as I turned the corner they spilled all over the road. I didn't pick them up.

TELL THEM- you gave up button collecting,NOW you collect 100% quilting cotton!! LOL!!-see what you get!!

Buttons are wonderful for folks that embellish. I make crazy quilts and am always on the lookout for interesting buttons. Kick myself for getting rid of lots of buttons when I did not do crazy quilting. Look at it this way. Family loves you and wants to contribute something that pertains to your quilting. Once went to a place in Ohio where they had cemented buttons into the walls of a gazebo. It was wonderful to see.
Donna

I love buttons. I make pins with them - make a heart-shaped clay base, glue on buttons and lace and pearls or other small gems then outline the outside edge of the heart with ribbon. I then spray it with clear varnish.
You can send your buttons to me. LOL

luvTooQuilt... so glad you opened this thread...I'm a button-lover... and have the same stories as many of you here about playing with Grandmother's and Momma's buttons as a child... and yes, I still have the metal box of Momma's. But I used many of them recently to quilt a D9P made for my DSIL. I SID on the outside of the blocks, but placed a button in the middle of the large patch of each one. It turned out very cute and she and her DH love the quilt. I'm thrilled to see so many new ideas for buttons here... I've bookmarked all of them!!

Oh I just remembered a tiny button book I gave to Momma and now have... be right back...

It has all kinds of interesting tid-bits about buttons: We use the term "cops" for police because in 1844 NY Mayor James Harper put big copper buttons on the uniforms... They called them "coppers" and we've shortened it..

"Dough boys" originated during the Civil War when certain regiments wore large globular brass buttons that someone thought looked like a boiled dumpling. (He must have been hungry at the time?)

Martha Stewart: "Buttons are the fossils of the sartorial world, enduring long past the garments they were designed to hold together."

"You can have the shirt off my back--but you can't have the buttons." Nancy Bartholomew Fink 20th Century button collector and president of the National Button Society

Great stuff!! Thanks for inviting us to talk about buttons!!

I could see saving pretty detailed buttons for an authentic Crazy Quilt, a Quirky Wall Hanging or a detail little girls quilt. Unless you have a nice glass jar and you want to use them to decorate your sewing room there aren't too many other choices for all the buttons. I'm sure there are plenty oof gals on the QB that would love to have some...

I love buttons!!!! I don't know why!!!!

The only buttons that were ever given to me was a jar full of fabric-covered buttons. Not a big fan of these at all. They just stay in the jar.

If anyone wants to unload some small buttons, I am available to help out! LOL

I love Buttons! I have tons of them, I also loved my grandmothers button box, I think it was a cigar box.
There is alot of history behide those and I still like to play with them .

I love buttons also, when I go garage saleing and estate sales thats the first thing I look for. Then Fab. I have a lot, but they make nice add twos

I, too, love buttons. I do make things with them, but mostly they are in fancy glass jars and vases and just look pretty. When I was little (many, many years ago) I use to sit in my mothers sewing room and play with her buttons by the hour. I collect all sorts of buttons, but mostly antique buttons. If you would like, I can send you may address, hehe. You can give it to your friends and relatives & when they pick up buttons, they can give them to me instead of you.

I don't collect them but when I see a bin, I can't pass it without running my hands through the buttons. Love the feel and the sound it makes. Once I added buttons as part of the quilting. 168 buttons later I was ready to commit something. lol

I have been collecting buttons to use in tying a quilt.
So Glad to see others have done this also...

I grab all the buttons I find at yard and garage sales. And the flea markets also. I use them on my doll dresses. And sometimes for eyes on bears and dolls.

I just looked up the big book of buttons on amazon - $350.00! OMG I really want one, I too love buttons and have my Grandmothers.

I love buttons, send them to me!!!

Love the blog doecdoe.blogspot.com - she posted a great idea with buttons on January 13, 2011 ... got the idea from here ... http://www.designspongeonline.com/20...splay-art.html

In my mind button collections belong in two groups, those of us that really don't want to throw them away because "I really might need one", or I can use it for this or that.

Then there are the really dedicated collectors of vintage buttons that were made centurys ago or made from wood or bone or especially ivory, which is now illegal. There are beautiful handmade buttons and blown glass ones. There are still hand made buttons that are very expensive and found in bridal departments. Beautiful.

I absolutely HATE buttons. Hate, hate, hate even the thought of buttons. I have no reason why, but must come from something in my childhood. I do remember my grandmother having a big tin full of buttons of all colors, shapes, sizes, etc. and I know I used to sort through them for her. Now when I buy clothes that have extra buttons with them, I put them in a plastic container and hide them in the back of my dresser drawer so I don't see them. SHUDDER!

me too!

me too!

Do kids still sort buttons? As a child, I too, was a button-sorter. My grandfather was a woodworker and he made a miniature dresser where my mother kept her buttons. A rainy, not-feeling-too-well day was always made better by dumping all the drawers and refilling them by that day's criteria. Today, I have that dresser with many of the buttons that I used to play with still in it, but nowadays it collects mostly dust.

I LOVE buttons! I have an 11 year old granddaughter who just loves to dump them out and sort through them too. Not sure what the attraction is - just love em. :thumbup:

Cute ornament! May have to give this a try. :lol:

I also love buttons, big jars filled with old buttons.