Button Button
I decided to take a trip into the city on Friday. The SewGood studio in New Westminster is only a 30 minute ride on the Skytrain to downtown Vancouver, but I just don’t get down there much anymore. I felt like the country mouse in the big city!
While I was there I visited a wonderful little shop called Button Button which sells…you guessed it! Buttons! Every size shape and colour that you can imagine! They have plastic, wooden, leather, metal, glass, vintage, modern… If you can’t find it here, it probably doesn’t exist.
If you go for a visit, give yourself lots of time. For a small shop there is a lot to see. It is a magical place, with wonderful displays of buttons, button art with quaint sayings and little treasures in every nook and cranny.
The owner of the shop, Colleen, is a delightful lady who has been running Button Button for twenty years. It was lovely to chat with someone that remembers all the old fabric stores that used to be our favourites, back in the day. She is wonderfully creative and showed me a book she put together with all sorts of ideas for updating a sweater by changing up the buttons. Colleen told me that often the button is the inspiration for the garment. Find the button and the garment will come! So perhaps, you will find the perfect button to make you want to learn to sew!
I also learned a little lesson in humility and non-judgement while I was there. I had, rather off handedly, asked if she was bothered by the rubbies in the area. After giving me a quiet look, she told me they were neighbours, they had become her friends, they all looked out for each other. She showed me a lovely white orchid that one fellow had asked her to keep for him because he didn’t have a home for it. He would often drop by to visit his flower and enjoy it! Another fellow would come by with his CD of Hallelujah by Jeff Buckley and she would play it for him (over and over) because, of course, he didn’t have a CD player. Thank you for that, Colleen, you have a beautiful heart! AND you’ve taught me a valuable lesson.
Of course, I had to buy a few buttons, just because they were so pretty! The buttons were lovingly wrapped in sunshiny tissue and a special little bag! I already have an idea of what I will sew that will showcase these buttons!
