Buttons of Dreams

October 5, 2010 By Kate in buttons, finishing, knitting Tags: buttons, finishing, joy, knitting, nichols buttons, sewing, stitching 35 Comments

Several of you left comments or sent me messages regarding my button dilemma (for which many thanks). But the biggest thanks must go to Jayne, who told me about the amazing buttons of Lionel Nichols. (Warning! Prepare yourselves! The link takes you directly to button heaven!) Sixty years ago, Nichols fashioned beautiful glass buttons by hand for London couturiers. His daughter, Dixie, has inherited his collection, and now offers the remaining buttons for sale in seasonal collections. To quote Dixie’s website:

“For two decades, 1946 to 1966, L. Nichols produced what were probably the most interesting and original buttons in England. I have boxes and boxes of buttons, many of them unopened for decades, a treasure trove built up order by order as extras had to be made to ensure that a matched set could be found for each garment, in spite of the irregularities of the hand made process.”

All of Nichols buttons are unique, and many are quite staggeringly beautiful. Perusing Dixie’s collections, I was reminded of just how precious-seeming and utterly desirable buttons can be (more thoughts on which here). Indeed, in terms of their beauty, the care of their craftmanship and their sheer rarity, these buttons really are almost jewels. . . and their prices quite rightly reflect this. . . in any case, when I spotted the buttons you see above I knew I had to have them for my 1930s/40s inspired cardigan. This is the first time I have ever made anything in which the cost of the fastenings has outweighed the cost of the yarn, but these really are superlative buttons.

This cardigan does not have buttonholes: rather, I’ve used clear snap fasteners and a taped reinforcement on the inside of each of the button bands to secure the closures and help the cardigan fronts to keep their shape. Most people use grosgrain ribbon to do this, but I tried this linen tape I had knocking about, which seemed the right sort of colour.

Does it sound weird if I say that I really enjoyed stitching the tape to the inside of the button bands? And am I allowed to admit that I am quite proud of my almost invisible stitches?

I secured the snap fasteners and buttons using strong quilting thread. Then I un-plied a few lengths of the corriedale yarn I had used to knit the cardigan, and, with a sharp sashiko needle, covered all the stitches that were showing on the right side of the garment with the single-plyed yarn. I also went all-out binding and blanket-stitching the shanks of the buttons: they are quite heavy, and need lots of reinforcing to sit correctly.

(the Nichols buttons have been updated with new metal shanks that are well-made and well-glued)

Anyway, I’m pleased with my finishing – which has resulted in a cardigan that closes neatly without undue stretch to the front bands. . . adorned with some extra-special buttons.

I really am stupidly happy with the Nichols buttons and, since they were attached to the cardigan, have been revelling in foolish button joy.

(Pics and specs of the whole shebang tomorrow. Can you tell I am excited?)

buttons of doom

September 30, 2010 By Kate in buttons, knitting Tags: buttons, duttons for buttons 53 Comments

It turns out that there are only three of these buttons in my box. Horrors! I have been knitting this cardigan with the thought of these buttons, and the distinct impression that I actually possessed five. . . Yes, I know I should have had a look beforehand. . . but there were certainly five at one time – I bought them a decade or so ago, when they were used to smarten up a rather plain green jacket. The jacket is long gone, and there are now only three buttons in the box . . . where their missing compatriots are is anybody’s guess. The buttons came from Duttons in York, whose stock is both extensive and long-standing. It would not be that unusual for them to still have a button or two that had first been bought ten years ago, so I emailed them to ask on the offchance. And Duttons do, in fact, still have two buttons of exactly the same silver and green enamel design, but only in the 1.5cm size (these are 2cm). So it was back to the button box. I certainly have an awful lot of buttons, and an obvious preference for what one might term novelty items. . .

(I actually find the fishbowls quite pleasing, but must resist. . . this is not a novelty sort of garment).

Though my box contains birds, hedgehogs, bees, foxes, roller skates, and a small lone wooden giraffe, it has nothing that is even remotely suitable for this cardigan, so I now have a buttonless garment happily blocking on the dress form. Vintage glass buttons might be nice, but now I just have to find them . . .

foxy

January 31, 2010 By Kate in beasties Tags: buttons, fox, foxes 21 Comments

A forgotten treasure in the button box.

York Craft Tour

April 25, 2009 By Kate in brewing, craft, embroidery, food, textiles, walking, yarn Tags: ale, beer, Bettys, brewing, buttons, cakes, chocolates, chooclatier, duttons for buttons, embroidery, food, Japanese Shop, Kate Davies, knitting, Monk Bar chocolatier, New Walk, north yorkshire, quilting, quilts, River Foss, River Ouse, sewing, Sheepish, Taylors of Harrogate, tea, UK Quilter's guild, wool, yarn, York, york brewery, York Castle Museum, York city walls, York Minster, Yorkshire 22 Comments

(Felix in Duttons).

I am busy. I do not find long working days particularly good for either body or soul. During periods of insane activity, one must always find a little time to spend in the restorative presence of friends, and it was great to meet up with Felix the other day. We spent a lovely, crafty few hours in York, highlights of which included a cake shaped like a cauliflower, and these amazing tea-cup buttons that Felix found in Duttons (of course).

(very Felix buttons)

After this, and my earlier button pilgrimage with Ysolda, I thought it might be a good idea to produce a map, linking together my favourite York crafty locations. You can click each map-marker to see my notes on each location, or click on ‘larger map’ to zoom in and see the full thing in much more detail.

View Larger Map

Each marker takes you to one of eleven craft hotspots. In no particular order, they are:
1. Duttons (for Buttons)
2. Betty’s (tea. baked goods. confectionery.)
3. Viking Loom (embroidery, quilting, beading)
4. Sheepish (best place for yarn)
5. The Japanese Shop
6. York Beer and Wine (and cheese and cider) shop
7. Priestley’s Vintage Clothing
8. Quilter’s Guild Museum
9. York Castle Museum
10. York Brewery
11. Monk Bar Chocolatiers

(Betty’s. Yorkshire delicacies indeed).

This list is entirely personal, and a bit idiosyncratic. For example, I like ‘Sheepish’ for Yarn, and the ‘Viking Loom’ for embroidery supplies, and I prefer both to ‘Craft Basics’ on Gillygate. On my list you will find beer and cheese, wool and cakes, the finest local produce and ingredients, and (perhaps incongruously) some lovely stuff from Japan. There are also two brilliant museums: the York Castle Museum (chock full of fabulous textiles and intriguing domestic objects), and the museum and archive of the UK Quilter’s Guild (now happily housed in their new home in St Anthony’s Hall). Check their websites for opening times and listings of current exhibitions.

(Ysolda by the River Ouse).

One of the best things about York is how compact and pedestrian-friendly it is. All of the craft hot spots on my list are within or near the city centre, and all are in in easy walking distance from each other. Walking around York is aided by two of the city’s unique geographic / architectural features: its rivers and its walls. The city is bisected by the rivers Foss and Ouse, the latter of which is lined by a lovely Georgian path known (then and now) as the “New Walk“. As well as being a genuine pleasure in itself, a quick walk along the “New Walk” takes you to the haven of refreshment that is the York Beer and Wine shop. A York organisation has produced this great guided tour of the New Walk, which I strongly recommend reading. (I used to live in the first location on this tour many moons ago when I was a student. Ahem.)

(The New Walk in 1756)

The Romans built the original walls around the city they named Eboracum. These defensive walls have been rebuilt several times since over the centuries, and today you can walk almost the whole way round the city centre along well-maintained wall paths which, according to York City Council, are tramped on by around a million people a year. Several of my craft hotspots are near to the bars (or gates) which form the stopping-off and getting-on points for wall-walkers. These include Monk Bar Chocolatiers (located, unsurpsingly, by Monk Bar) and The Viking Loom (close to Bootham Bar).

(Felix walks along the city walls toward Bootham Bar).

As I said, this list is entirely personal, but if any of you Yorkshire folk feel I’ve missed a really vital craft hot spot, do tell me, and I can make additions (or amendments) to the map. Hope you enjoy it! Thankyou!

(tree of knowledge on the doorway of York Minster).

eborbutton

April 3, 2009 By Kate in Uncategorized Tags: ale, beer, Bettys, buttons, craft tour, duttons for buttons, north yorkshire, York, Yorkshire 31 Comments

Ysolda and I have been pursuing our craft tour with gusto. It now appears to be extending out from Edinburgh in several directions. The other day, we traveled a bit further than usual on the East Coast Mainline, and hopped on a train to York. York is one of my old stomping grounds, and there are many reasons to visit. It is a great compact city in which you can literally walk through a whole millennium, admiring fine examples of British architecture from the Roman to the Victorian. It is home to one of the most important Gothic cathedrals in Northern Europe. And the light in York is always particularly beautiful — something about the flatness of the landscape and the soft colours of the stone. None of this interested us, however. We went to York for buttons.

In York, Duttons for Buttons is something of a local institution, and, if you ask me, it deserves to be a national one as well. For Duttons is so much more than a well-stocked haberdashers with friendly, knowledgeable staff, selling an excellent range of needlecraft and dressmaking supplies and notions. Duttons is, in fact, the spiritual home of the button, a palace, a shrine, a hymn to that tiny and miraculous combination of decorative form and function . . .

Duttons!

For Buttons!

Buttons exemplify the appeal of the numinous and miniature. They are ordinary things, neither jewels nor sweeties, but there is still something precious, sensuous, near-edible about them. And, unlike jewel-things, buttons have an important functional point to make. If fabric is the language, then buttons are the grammar of our clothing — openings, pauses, closings — as well the decorative accent of any outfit.

We all know the singular pleasure of poking around in a button box — the delight of handling, arranging, and admiring lovely button-things. Now imagine that box-sized pleasure magnified to the size of a shop, and you have some sense of just how great it is to be in Duttons. There is the satisfying knowledge that you have over 12,000 kinds of buttons to play with and choose from. Then there is the space of Duttons itself, with its medieval beams and wobbly floor. The shop fittings have stayed the same for forty years or more — the buttons are displayed, floor-to-ceiling, in worn, compartmentalised cardboard boxes, which you can examine on pleasing tables that pull out from the button-wall.

The sheer range of Duttons buttons is frankly amazing. There is glass and acrylic, wood and cloisonné, in an incredible array of sizes, styles and hues. And what makes some of this stock so precious, is that so much of it is discontinued. Many of the buttons sold here have their stylistic origins in the 40s and 50s and are literally at the end of the line. The nine buttons you buy for your coat or cardigan might be the last few available anywhere. Superlatives really cannot capture the sheer wonder that is Duttons. If you are lucky enough to live in West or North Yorkshire, you will also find branches in Ilkley and Harrogate.

Here are some of my spoils.

so tasty.

Oh, and by the way, York is brilliant for many crafty things other than buttons. These include Betty’s . . .

(the mere phrase ‘selection of miniature cakes’ on the menu made me stupidly gleeful)

. . . and of course, beer

. . . the subject of other posts.

And just a quick a note about the owlet – - I was very interested in your comments, and in Franklin Habit’s remarks about the same issue, to which Lucette linked. After reading both, I was filled with a militant desire to chat to mums in the street, and ask their kids to wear my sweater. Over the past few days I’ve tried this with mixed results. Unlike Franklin, the problem I discovered was not the attitude of the parents to the weird-sweater-brandishing-person (all were interested, most were helpful) but simply the age and size of the kids on offer — I’ve just not been able to find any 1 year olds! In Duttons, for example, I got chatting to a lovely mum with an equally lovely toddler, but when we matched kid up to sweater the latter turned out to be much too small. And just when I was beginning to think that, since toddlers seem to be clearly the most numerous, or at least the most publicly available size of kid, I’d better just knit another sweater, I received an email from a someone and her just-one-year-old who may well turn out to be my owlsend. Hurrah! More soon.

miscellany

June 1, 2008 By Kate in brewing, craft, film, food, rant, review, sewing, textiles Tags: Amber Collective, beer, bread, buttons, Harmony Korine, Mister Lonely, sewing, swaps, Writing in the Sand 3 Comments

The postie has been bringing me a right bag of treats lately. Here’s a selection.

Big thanks to Lara, Felix, Jesse, Annushka, and Philippa!

The top pic shows some absolutely delicious Oxford Kitchen Yarn’s sock yarn in the plum colourway. The colour (which is not quite true in the photo) has a precise and very evocative childhood association for me — of blackcurrant jam mixed into rice pudding (thanks so much, L!) You see here also lovely buttons, badges and ribbons, as well as the Fantastical Reality Radio Show activity booklet which has brought me untold joy over the past few days. It has also made me strangely — nay, not a little obsessively — aware of ordinary household sounds. Mr B was bemused to discover me with a dictaphone, recording the sounds of making a pot of tea. And you’ll see from the last photo that I’m already putting Philippa’s red grossgrain to good use. More of this later.

Meanwhile, miscellaneous weekend things.
A sunday lunch of bread and beer:

I made the bread (unusual, this, as I don’t bake much) but not the beer. It is a dark mild – much lighter and more refreshing than it looks in that picture – delicious.

Also, I made a keyring with a bee in it. Just because I could.

did you know you can get a bag of blank keyrings for around 3p each on ebay? well you can . . .

Finally, something to see and something to avoid from the past couple of days.

ONE TO SEE: The Writing in The Sand, Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen, Amber Films (1991).
Having frequented the Side Gallery, cinema and cafe in Newcastle, and admiring the work of the Amber collective, I was looking forward to this DVD immensely, and it did not disappoint. Built out of of Konttinen’s fabulous photographs of the beaches and people of the North East, The Writing on the Sand is a miracle of editing: narrative-driven and highly cinematic. I am fond of British documentaries about leisure, and particularly seaside-associated leisure, but am often troubled by how treatments of this theme patronise their subjects. Lindsay Anderson’s O! Dreamland is a case in point (much as I love Lindsay Anderson). Written in the Sand, though, is a frank and affectionate, exuberant and celebratory portrait of people enjoying themselves outside. It’s really a great piece of work. And, as well as being a stunning document of the changeable and well-loved beaches and climate of the North East over the past 20 years; and providing an evocative, poetic critique of the effects of marine pollution, this short film also also conveys a very powerful message about the importance of public (and particularly recreational) space, and the threat to it from the wholescale privatisation of the British landscape — our beaches in particular. Eat that, Donald Trump (together with your plans for turning the dunes of Balmedie into golfing-hell)

I’m now very tempted to buy this book of Konttinen’s original photographs.

ONE TO AVOID:
Why, when I read the blurb (Michael Jackson connects with Marilyn Monroe on a Scottish island retreat for celebrity impersonators) did I think it might be a good idea to go and see Mister Lonely? Why, having disliked with a passion every other film I’ve seen by Harmony Korine did I still go and see it? I suspect the presence of Samantha Morton swung it for me, but that was two hours of my life I will never get back again. If I start going on about just how bad a film this was I’ll never stop . . .but it was seriously vacuous twaddle, made all the worse the worse for thinking that it actually had something to say. I soon got bored of noticing James Fox and David Blaine, or wondering what on earth Werner Herzog was doing there &c &c, and had to divert myself for the last hour and a half of the film (groan) by thinking about the design and construction of the lacy cardigan worn by the Shirley Temple impersonator. One final thing, though: by anybody’s standards, Diego Luna makes a terrible Michael Jackson.

swap joy

May 23, 2008 By Kate in craft, design, fabric Tags: badges, buttons, covered buttons, stitch markers 8 Comments

I’m really enjoying the badge swap. Here are a selection of the wee treats I’ve already received:

Joy! Thanks so much, Anna, Amy, and Claire! I was particularly impressed with the speed of the post from Canada and Sweden.

Meanwhile, badge madness continues. This time, though, I’ve managed to turn out some I can actually wear about my person.

These are made from tiny samples given to me by a friend and originally from (sigh) Linnet. The quality of their fabrics is just superb — theres the same sort of pleasure handling them as there is in the fabrics I’ve seen in nineteenth-century sample books. They are priced accordingly (particularly if one is considering buying them from Japan). I also attempted to make a couple of badges out of my bag of saved selvedges (inspired by Jodie’s keyrings) but these were less successful. But my Linnet-fabric badges have the same sort of appeal as covered buttons. In fact, the badge maker might very easily be put to use making some of these . . hmmm . . . .

Kate Davies Designs

Tag Archives: buttons