I am making a little pink dress for my nine month old granddaughter Anya. The pattern included a hat with a bow that I decided to pin on so the brim could be used pinned up with the bow or down without the bow to keep off the sun. When I was around age 2 or 3 my mom always made me wear a big old straw hat to keep out the sun and to minimize the freckles. There was no sun screen for kids in those days. The hat didn’t do much good as I would run around the yard lickety-split and with the hat trailing down my back hanging from the string around my neck. Yes, freckles galore.
I had bought a package of hooks and eyes for about $1.79 to sew on the back of Anya’s little dress at the top of the zipper. I decided she needed a little cloth purse to match the dress to hold the dolly I was making her. I was scrounging around my sewing drawers looking for a scrap of blanket satin for the dolly’s arms. My friends with more grand mothering skills than myself remarked that Anya would need something soft to touch.
What a bunch of unusual items I found in my sewing drawers. I must have had twenty packages of snaps and hooks / eyes that I had picked up over the years or collected from some of my Mom’s stuff. Some of the packages were labeled for ten cents. Others were three for a dollar. None were for $1.79. Boy the cost of inflation over the years. I put them all neatly in a tin box I bought recently at a garage sale for a quarter. At least I feel that I didn’t waste my quarter as I now have a use for what I bought.
I found a sandwich sized bag full of old buttons. Some were really pretty. A couple looked like black and white checker board. Big brassy metal ones had ornate designs and probably came off a coat or the top button of a cape. Three were grey green and shaped like a small bow. Groups of the same buttons in yellow, white and green were strung on a thread to hold them all together in hopes they could be used for a blouse again. They will probably never be used for that purpose. I haven’t made myself a blouse for years as it is a lot of work and patterns never really fit. I’ll keep to the little grand daughter dresses that fit just about right with minimum work.
I found some really cute little children’s buttons smaller than a dime that looked like teddy bears, pigs, clowns and more. I think Mom must have bought these for a special project she had in miniature, maybe for a dollhouse, but she never used them. They must have been special for her as she had them separated from the rest of the buttons. Mom used to shop with my Aunt Shirley Waymon. At one time, Shirley was building and decorating a dollhouse with my Uncle Don. I imagine it was one of those types of projects that Mom had in the back of her head to work on.
I remember Mom did love to make little crocheted Christmas trees that she decorated with small ornaments and sometimes sewed on Christmas type buttons. Sometimes her miniature trees were made from green thick chenille like pipe cleaners that she pressed into a Styrofoam cone.
My Grandmother Anna Swanson had a grey round metal container where she kept all her buttons. The few times I was left at her house as a young child to be babysat, I remember her situating me on the first couple of steps in her day room with a big long string of heavy carpet thread. She had treaded it on an extra large needle and tied off a button on the bottom of the string. I sat for hours loading that string up with buttons. There was no purpose really to this task except to keep me occupied while she worked at her sewing machine next to the stairs. When I had finished, these buttons had to go back into the button box for future use to fix shirts and skirts.
One time I went to visit my Grandmother Anna by myself. We lived about two miles from her house. I had to be at least 10 or 11 as that was when I had my horse Queenie. I saddled her up and off I went through the back fields under the railroad trestle and through the scrubby trees along the creek where my brother trapped beaver from time to time. I remember stopping to talk with Uke Murora and her two kids, Kenny and Judy. Uke and Jim were tenant farmers for my Grandpa Carl.
I had tied my horse loosely to the clothesline pole. Queenie got spooked with all the excitement and got loose some how. She ran and caught the saddle horn on the clothesline wire making a slice through the leather. I got her back in control not knowing if the clothesline needed repair after that or not. I went across the street to my Grandma’s. I thought she would be thrilled to see me as I was happy to see her. After I tied up my horse, she invited my in. I’m sure she gave me a cookie or two while she rang up my mom to find out what I was doing over there. All I remember is her saying on the phone, “Guess who showed up at my doorstep today.”