hardest button to button

I just finished tearing off all the too-bright green buttons off the Colorbox Sweater and replacing them with nice bright (but not too bright) pink buttons. Just in time, too... I'm supposed to be giving this sweater to a kid on Saturday at her 4th birthday party.

One of my most favorite activities is trawling antique stores for cool buttons. Some places will take matching sets and wire them together on cards and then charge outrageous prices for them. I prefer sifting through buckets of buttons and finding the matches myself - and paying more like 25 cents a button. Here are some of my favorites:



These came from an antique store in Selma, where they had a huge rack full of plastic bags full of buttons. These all came in the same bag - I think the bag cost around $3 and had about a dozen buttons in it. Last time I went back to that place, the rack was gone. Boo hoo!

This week I got my vintage button love indulged by GreenKitchen, who led me to the Vintage Buttons flickr group (for pictures of peoples buttons and things they've made with them). Total button porn. Yum.

Vintage buttons don't usually come in big sets, so it can be hard to use them for something like a whole cardigan, but they are wonderful as closures for something like a purse or cape. I also love vintage buckles. You don't see enough of these cool closures on clothes and accessories anymore. A few months ago Bugheart sent me a surprise package with wonderful old buckles inside, including the big funky wooden one in this picture:



I have this fantasy that I'm going to use up all these great buttons and buckles on fabulous clothes and accessories that I've knit up for my friends and family, but at this rate it's going to take the rest of my life. I guess I'd be okay with that, though...