Button box treasure

It’s been a hectic few weeks, finishing up things at school so going part time this term can be an easier transition; spending 4 long days of the Easter holiday sorting my classroom out so my personal brand of organisation is accessible to someone else and then a wonderful week’s holiday in the Lake District with some friends and some of the most superb weather I’ve ever had on holiday in the UK!

                    (Grasmere from Loughrigg Fell – not a cloud in the sky!)

But hopefully now I’m only teaching 3 days a week I can actually get a work-life balance.

Anyway, as well as the miniature embroidery we did at the last Embroiderers’ Guild meeting, (which I made up into a card for my youngest’s 9th birthday on Friday) we sadly had another pile of a former member’s sewing items available to take home for donations.  I don’t believe a single woman in that room, me included, truly needed any more threads, fabric, buttons etc. but we couldn’t help ourselves! Other people’s stuff is utterly irresistible and it was the button box, a wonderful conglomerate of buttons and other oddments, that drew me like a magnet.

These brass WWII naval buttons will be perfect to go on one of the army uniforms we have at the theatre group which is currently unusable because it has no buttons – no one will be able to tell on stage.

I also couldn’t resist the marble, miscellaneous key, odd earring and pencil stub!

Mother of pearl buttons are pretty irresistible too, and some of these had the most amazing pearly flash and glow.

I especially like the stormy purples in the dark grey ones.

And such gorgeous shapes. The floral one at the back is actually a stud and the single hole one on the right has a double hole on the back so when you stitch it on, the thread stays below the top face of the button. Very nifty!

French jet (black glass ) beads from a broken bracelet and an odd earring.

Wooden squares with brass shanks and big coat buttons in unusual bold designs and colours.

Glass, metal and a pencil stub. The two almond shaped buttons have red around one hole and blue around the other but the colour refracts through the facets of the button giving a wonderful moving play of colours around the edges.

All sorts. I’ve no idea what some of these things are.  The turquoise cabochon has a hole part way into the back, so probably part of an old earring. A clay marble, painted to look like glass, gold thread wrapped beads, very thin red plastic buttons on a piece of ribbon, basket-like ‘things’, beads, a workbox or jewellery box type key and a paste gem tipped stud.

I might do something with them, or I might not – sometimes it’s just nice to cherish little things for their own sake.