Vintage shoe buttons save the day...

 

When I do a large floral area such as this I attach the flowers one color at a time.  I start with the medium size flowers and then the larger one and finish filling in with the small one and accent stitching..

Here the yellow are the medium.  You might notice I added some colored lace besides the green leaves previously added. 







And if you hadn't been reading when I was working on this last spring.... after the flowers were made I misted them lightly  and put them in the book press for a couple days.  I was aiming to get the "smashed" look of vintage millinery flowers.  I'm not sure if I'm succeeding but still forging ahead.

My secondary goal for this project is to use a goodly amount of my most precious buttons that I have collected.  That includes the black glass and vintage metal buttons leftover from the suffrage quilt.  I keep my these buttons in these vintage office flat files... unlike all the other buttons kept in large jars in the barn.  Just below is my entire supply of seed beads.

I also want to use the last of my buttons I bought in London several years ago.  Lower right in this picture is a card of shoe buttons I bought in a tiny (and I mean micro tiny) button shop on Portobello Road.  I was told they were dyed bone but when I was removing the pin shanks one looked like dyed MOP.

I've already used all the ones I bought at "The Button Queen" which was a very upscale shop that took me forever to find.



I loved the subtle color of the shoe buttons and they are perfect centers for the yellow flowers. If you look closely at the larger picture above you will see that each one is a different color.