2 minute read
Be Bold
Hidden Gems
Thousands of buttons found in one Huntersville woman’s collection
BY: » Renee Roberson PHOTOGRAPHY COURTESY OF: » Gay Rudisill
Most of us have buttons stuffed away in envelopes or drawers—buttons that come as “extras” with clothing just in case we lose one and need a replacement. Huntersville resident Gay Rudisill has those types of buttons, but they accompany an impressive array of what is likely close to 8,000 buttons she’s been collecting since she was in her early 40s.
That’s thirty plus years of buttons. They are displayed in beautiful glass jars, baskets and even in an old green battery case in her home and have served many purposes since she began her collection. She first discovered an interest in this type of collecting more than 30 years ago while attending an auction. She bid on a large batch of buttons, won them, and a collection was born.
“Anytime I was somewhere, like a sale at a store, I would look for buttons,” she says. Some of her favorite places to find buttons are flea markets, thrift stores, antique stores and garage sales. She especially enjoys coming across jars full of buttons where someone has been keeping them for years, and then decides to sell or donate them as one large group. Friends and acquaintances also gift her with buttons they find themselves
about to donate because they know she’ll appreciate them.
Rudisill says some of her favorite finds are buttons that look like they came from military uniforms, and ones from vintage coats (think the 1930s and 1940s) and glass buttons.
“The most fun I have with it is imagining who wore these buttons,” she says. “What was the person like? What was the outfit like? What is the history behind this button?”
A family affair
found within those jars. They served as a bonding activity with her firstborn grandson. When he would visit with her, they would sit on her floor and sort, count and examine the buttons together.
“We’d make patterns with them,” she says. “He’d practice counting with them, too.”
About 15 years ago, she also found out her sister collected buttons. It was one of those things neither of us them had said much about, so they were surprised they shared the common interest. They enjoy hunting for buttons now when they get together.
Over the years, she’s used buttons from her collection to make homemade ornaments, and once she made individual Christmas trees out of dough and buttons to serve as miniature ornaments on the designs.
A lost art form
Rudisill says she believes everyone should know how to sew a button, and she occasionally dips into her collection if she needs to mend a shirt or pair of pants. Her mother sewed beautifully, and she taught her daughters the craft. Another treasured keepsake from Rudisill’s childhood is a cast iron child’s Singer sewing machine she got as a child. When she was six years old, she went to the store and picked it out. That summer, she sewed her first outfit. She sewed all of her children’s clothes when they were little. And each of her grandchildren have sewed a pillow using that machine, and the machine still sits in her home today, alongside her many jars of buttons.
