I have just "inherited" my mother's button tin

[SoupDragon]

[happy sigh]

I say "inherited" but she is alive and well :o

I am rummaging through it looking for the old favourites that were there when I was a child...

I had a cuppa with my mum today and after a week of decorating, I was rather more relaxed and was sitting stamping images. I told her about my bunting idea and some how the conversation turned to buttons!

My mum still has my Great Grandmothers button tin, in fact she said she had looked through it fairly recently. My mum mentioned the fact that little groups of buttons had been threaded together using scraps of wool that we'd all had hand knitted jumpers with when we were younger. I think a trip down memory lane is called for when the DC are back at school.

I need a good tin for my buttons, I have my eye on my DS's M&S gingerbread ones but he's using them. At the moment I have them in these jars as they look quite vintage like when empty (and run through the dishwasher a few times, as to me a vegetarian they smell gross!)

I have some of mine in colour coordinated jars from Douwe Egbert's coffee. LOL

I like mine in the gingerbread man one, especially as it has three buttons on the front.

Went to Hobbycraft today and couldn't resist spending £3 on a bag of mixed buttons. Also, asked a friend who works in a charity shop if her shop kept buttons and she said yes it did and not only that would I like her recently deceased MILs button collection as she didn't want it.

WhoKnows I have button

this is how the correct ettiquette is.

1: say "I need a set of buttons I will look in the button tin"
2: look in the button tin.
3: run your fingers through the buttons in the tin
4: tip the tin out onto the floor/mat/table
5: rummage through, stroking, feeling, touching
6: remember all the buttons you'd forgotten
7: match sets of buttons and put them all together.
8: declare that there isn't a complete set for your project
9: go to the haberdasherer's and buy a set of buttons (ie. you need 5 vuttons but you buy 6 or even 7)
10: complete your project and put the spare buttons in the tin.

Those are pretty much my rules for any kind of stash! Yarn, fabric, ribbon-insert as applicable with a bit less fondling and rummaging than for buttons

my rules too - hence why I have a ridiculously big cloth stash

yy Unique - I might even get the button tin out today - just to play with them

I had a rummage through mine last night to find eyes for a small felted owl :)

Soup did that take you right back to the 70's ?

My mums (still at dads house) is an old blubird toffee tin. I have already said I will have it when he snuffs it . That and the tea caddy which I used to pretend was a bird cage as it had a handle that I could swing about.
(I even look out for buttons at bootsales)

No, Dothraki as I had to rummage through the tin I created - I couldn't bring myself to use something from The Tin Of History :o

I chose little grey buttons from one of DDs old school cardigans.

Soup - Button Hoarder Enabler
So you have The Tin Of History
Soups Original Tin Of Modernity
I must up my game
I have my DM's Tin Of History - with emphasis on 50's and 60's.
Today I will start
21st Century Tin for DD - an excuse to cut buttons off stuff and chuck clothes in the bin
and
Homage To History Tin for GD - these are going in a Jubilee shortbread tin (its only a small tin)

I'm sure I will be able to use things form the Tin of History one day. Just the dull buttons that I have no memory of.

To be far to my tin, it does have old buttons in it as well as modern stuff but I bought them on Ebay as a job lot :o

I have DH's mum's tin of buttons.
It was full of all random crap too, so I got a jar to put all the random crap in and then put all the lovely buttons back in the tin.
and then took photos of it in an artistic type way.

Jealous, even though I have my own! And my grandma's trim boxes,a nd even her old pinking shears!

I've been unhappy with my MN name for a while, am thinking about changing it to "AllTheFabricHereIsMine".

that's a good name :)

I feel quite teary at this thread. My mother was a tailoress and half my childhood memories are haberdashery related. She had a button tin to die for.

Do you think you can start one? To me, it's the way they grew out of make do and mend and all that makes them so special. They weren't art or designed to be nostalgic. And yet, I want a button tin right now.

Some of these links are superb.

You can't use them. They are the leftovers. And it must be a tin. One of those quite hard to open Quality Street tins.

There should be an exhibition of buttons hosted. A MN exhibition.

I have inherited my mother's sewing box but unfortunately my DB must have thrown out the tin when he was clearing the house ... no sense that man!
I can remember spending happy hours sorting and resorting the buttons when I was a child.
The tin wasn't Quality Street but was for some other confectionery (probably going back to the 1950s).

Yes, it references both fabric and cat-philosophy.

May I share a semi-related story? You all may hate me for it, but in a Good Way, I believe.

I went out fine Saturday one morning to buy some purple cotton. Got distracted by some charity shops, in one of them found one of those wooden boxes (with the levels on louvres) for a fiver, FULL of stuff, old needle cards, trim, tiny crochet hooks, etc.

Oh, and several reels of cotton, including one in the exact purple I wanted.