On The Button

Mainly out of curiosity I went down to St Andrew's and St George's West church to see what On The Button was about. I found a wide selection of buttons, plain and fancy, big and small, neatly sewn onto cards, priced and sorted into categories for us to riffle through at leisure.

It put me in mind of the contribution Elsie made to our charity shop, mounting buttons, cut from unsaleable clothing, onto cards - the shop gained quite a reputation as a reasonable source of buttons. Those on sale today, however, came from donations to Creative Together, a craft group based in three city centre churches (St Cuthbert's, St John's Episcopal and St Andrew's and St George's West), of entire button tins from friends and relations of the members; it was decided to have a sale in aid of Marie Curie. It has taken some 18 months to sort and mount them, with such attention to detail as choice of card colour relative to that of the buttons and a template for positioning the buttons, to make everything appear as orderly and attractive as possible. 

Further along the table were sewing accessories, old tins used for storage and cotton reels (I do like the old wooden ones). On the other side of the room were bowls of 'pick-and-mix' buttons, sorted only by colour and size, sold by the container. 

I had long conversations with several of the helpers, especially MG, a long-term member of the host church, and gained much information about nearby St James' Square, where she once lived, now currently undergoing its second demolition in the name of progress.

I admired many cards of buttons but restricted myself to four, plus a trio of late-donated ones on a thread, but have absolutely no idea how - indeed, whether - these will be used. As one of the helpers said, some people just line them up and gloat over them...