for the love of buttons!

Have I ever told you how much I love buttons?  It is hard not to when they look like this.

I bought all of those today!  While I loved sorting them and showing each one to my husband who kindly humored me this afternoon, it is really unfortunate that I had to buy them all today.  You see, Baer Fabric recently went out of business very suddenly after something like 104 years of being open.  This was a fabric store unlike any other I have every experienced.  It was three stories and had just about every kind of fabric you can imagine.  Plus they had this back wall with little boxes of the most incredible assortment of buttons–remember when Charlie first saw the inside of Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory?  That is how I felt the first time I saw this wall stacked floor to ceiling with buttons.  Anyways, when Baer closed, so did the button factory (or store I guess).  In fact, I found out about it one Monday after work.  I was getting ready to stop by to grab a few of these buttons for a project I was working on.  I checked their website to see if they were open that late, and it said they were closed–for good.  I had just been there the following week with no sign of them closing.  Anyways, they re-opened this week to have a store closing sale (sad reason for a sale, I know.)

So I got all of those buttons at half price, and it was really hard to choose which ones.  I also bought some fabric, but now that I think about it, I kind of wish I had saved the money and bought more buttons (I’m telling you, their selection is beyond imagination).  The one good thing about me not buying more is that I actually don’t like to sew buttons on.  I often have projects sitting for weeks on end, completely finished….except for the button that needs to be sewn on. 

So, here is all of the other goodies I picked up.  Some fat quarters, pretty flower fabric for market bags, green fabric for napkins, some vintage sack cloth type fabric, and some zippers.  Not too shabby for under $50 (including the buttons).