Button picking time

I’ve spent a lifetime collecting buttons. It’s not been a conscious decision but as instinctive as picking up a penny off the pavement or a pin on the floor. Buttons are to be saved.

The result is a stash, a veritable hoard of multi-coloured, bone, shell, wood, metal, fabric and plastic discs.

I’ve inherited at least three separate collections going back generations.

I rescue buttons off old clothes, store spares that come with new clothes and sometimes even buy them randomly. Secure in the knowledge that I’m saving for the future. Knowing that one rainy day I’ll go to the jar / tin / box and the right buttons will jump out.

So today was just such a day. I fanned out a selection of likely candidates, stood back, twisted this way and that and finally made my pick - a motley crew of seven shell buttons, a little scarred and chipped from their previous lives.

So now these seven have been given a new purpose, a new life.

Does this count as sustainable fashion?