Learn to make colorful, whimsical buttons – for jewelry, surface decoration or fasteners for your handmade garments – using only curtain rings, a tapestry needle, yarn, and beads. Based on 19th-century techniques from Dorset, England, these buttons are easy to create and customize to match your own fiber creations. To make your own buttons for a current weaving, felting, or knitting project, bring along your project and yarns. No prior experience needed.
Leader: Denise Kovnat
Duration: 3 hours
Level: Beginners to Advanced
Student supplies to bring:
- 2” diameter plastic or wooden curtain rings (available in packs of 5 from amazon.com)
- Tapestry needle (size 18 or larger, large enough for threading yarn)
- Beading needle or dental-floss threader (for threading beads as small as size 8 seed beads)
- Your own yarn for buttons
- Cotton yarn: 3/2, 5/2, 8/2 or 10/2 grist
- Sock yarn or fingering-weight wool yarn
- Beads for decorating the rim and the inside circle of the button
- Embroidery scissors
- Make a template to practice winding the spokes of the wheel:
- Cut a round disk out of firm cardboard, approx. 3” or more in diameter
- Using a pen, mark the hours and half hours of the clock at 12:00, 1:30, 3:00, 4:30, 6:00, 7:30, 9:00, and 10:30
- Clip the disk (about 1 / 4 ” deep) at each marked point
Materials Fee: None, bring the supplies listed above if you want to make a button with Denise.