Attic - Day 3

And sadly, our last day at the retreat.  Today would be spent with Sherri Jones from Patrick's Woods and we worked on her Button Lover's Brag Book.

This is the first class I have ever taken from Sherri; what a talented designer!  Her projects remind me of Jackie du Plessis - the projects are mostly small, there's a lot of over one stitching and they are very finely finished.  Such creativity and imagination to come up with designs which when finished are truly a work of art!

We had the opportunity to view some of Sherri's other teaching pieces which she had brought along.  She asked us not to take photos, but you can see pictures of all of them on her website:  Patrick's Woods.  My two favorites are The Lounging Hare Sewing Box and the Blue Ribbon Sewing Box.  It was fun to see her completed projects.

Our project of the day though was the Button Lover's Brag Book.  Here's a snap of the front cover.

This is a really cool book in which you can attach all of your favorite buttons!  Pictures of some of the inside pages can also be seen on Sherr's website.

Great teacher -- after going over all the kit materials, Sherri walked us through the instructions page by page.  We started to stitch the outside front and back cover.  Later on, Sherri took us through the finishing instructions.  I think this is going to be a fairly easy project to finish - her instructions are very detailed.

Probably the best part of the day was the lecture on the history of buttons.  A button is something we just kind of take for granted, right?  It serves a purpose -- like to keep our coats closed on blustery cold days like today, yes?  The button hasn't always had a job to do; when buttons were first introduced they were mainly used for ornamental purposes!

So many different types of buttons - metal, glass, shell, wood, pearls.  I had never heard of calico buttons before - do you know what they are?  I do now! (You will have to Google it.)  Sherri also shared many resources for finding and collecting buttons.  Oh dear, sounds like it could become another hobby.

Here are some of the buttons that Judy and I purchased from a button collector who was at the Attic for the shopping event on Saturday night.  The buttons on the cards on the left and the right of the photo are calico buttons!

Long story short - the inside of our button book can be customized to highlight whatever types of buttons we may have in our collections.  Great, great project.  And now the search for special buttons begins.

In hindsight, I wish I had taken the optional class with Sherri Jones that was offered on Monday (A Fine and Fancy Tulip Tray)...next time I will know better.We were set to fly home on Monday morning...74 degrees in Mesa to minus 6 degrees in Minnesota.  Brrr. All good things must come to an end and our weekend at the Attic Sampler Symposium was a very good thing...

I guess I better get busy stitching...I have a lot of projects to finish!