Button Puzzle

As I was sitting in the sunshine the other day, sewing buttons on my son’s favorite shirt, I realized I get a lot of satisfaction repairing something that is worth repairing.

And I like puzzles.

This favorite shirt of his has been around awhile… so I started sewing buttons on this shirt before he was married. And since I have a jar of buttons, he still asks me if I can repair it. 

This is the third time repairing it, and it reminded me of a book we would read over and over again to our boys when they were little called Hiram’s Red Shirt. It’s a story about a man who kept trying to patch his favorite red shirt until finally he had to buy a new one. I browsed through our bookshelves and found it, so now I can read it to the grandkids.

My story would read like this…there once was a favorite shirt with a button missing. I looked in my button jar and found a button similar to the buttons on the shirt so I sewed it on, and the shirt was ready to wear again.

A year or two later another button, or two, went missing. I will mention here – these buttons are not the ordinary dress shirt buttons and it’s amazing how many types of buttons there are in this world.

So, this time I used a button off the cuffs to replace the missing button from the buttoned placket in the front of the shirt. I used a different set of matching buttons for the cuffs…although not the same buttons, they looked similar to the original buttons, and since you don’t see the cuffs next to the placket it looked fine.

Another year or two goes by, and more buttons are broken or have gone missing. The shirt is still a favorite, is still in great shape, and is still worth repairing. 

So, back to my button jar. (This is fun for me.) Two buttons are missing; one from the pocket and one from the placket. I take the button from the second pocket, sew it on the placket and then hunt for two similar buttons from my button jar to sew on the pockets. I succeed in finding two that look alike – and look similar to the original – and sew all three buttons on the shirt. It’s ready for the next go around.

Here’s hoping the repair will last another year or two. I think it may require a whole new set of buttons next time, but I have thoroughly enjoyed my button puzzle.