Button, button

If the title made you think of a widget on an elevator or a website, then we aren’t on the same

page. Nor is the back button versus history button the debate currently occupying my thoughts.

The tactile, three-dimensional artifact that fastens clothing together is the object of discussion.

They’ve been around for about 5,000 years as works of art and, since sometime in the early 1200s, as practical clothing attachments. Like many other simple inventions, you could chat about buttons – their decoration, their manufacture, their usefulness – for quite a while. There are pearl, crocheted, wooden, ceramic and silver buttons; two- and four-holers and buttons with shanks.

Two restaurant-sized pickle jars full of assorted buttons, not to mention the biscuit tins stuffed with assorted containers of matching sets, rest close to my sewing area. You remember how Scarlet O’Hara in “Gone with the Wind” couldn’t buy buttons during the war? That’s never going to happen to me! This is a good thing, really, because, although I always make sure I put the one that’s come off in a very safe place, it often is such a safe place it may not surface again for years.

If you remember the game “Button, Button, Who Has the Button?”, then maybe you practice the skill of sewing on buttons.

My grandmother’s generation had these mending excuses all gathered together in a basket. She did not often sit with empty hands. Mending was best when the energy was lacking to deal with a demanding task and a body needed to sit. Her basket contains a darning egg, wooden spools of mercerized cotton and egg-eyed needles (the gauge of a fine knitting needle with points so finely ground and tempered, the decades have not dulled them).

Needle and thread have always been basic tools, but now I also need my reading glasses, a needle threader or magnifying glass and scissors for that polyester thread - not to mention the button. I’m not complaining: sewing on a button is not a thing that happens very often these days.

My boys learned this essential skill in Cubs, but when do they ever get to practice it? The only time they wear button down shirts is for school concerts, and they seem to outgrow these shirts long before there is any wear, long before any buttons are loosened. Most pants seem to have a riveted fastener of some kind. If that comes apart, a belt will help hold the pants up.

As long as my expanding waist line continues to put strain on my buttons, I will continue to replace them. My friend, Lois, taught me a nifty trick which seems to slow down the occurrence of popped off buttons. May we recommend dental floss wherever your sewing could benefit from an extra added strength?