New Gadget

When I was a child and my maternal grandparents weren't retired yet, I used to love visiting them in their textiles shop. My granny is a dressmaker and in their shop clients could both have clothes custom-made or have ready-made pieces altered. I was fascinated by the huge box of swatches and remnants of material she kept under the table by the window where her sewing machine stood. What I loved best, however, was the button machine. Creating beautiful fabric-covered buttons to match every outfit just by cutting a piece of material and putting it into the machine together with a tin button consisting of two parts - a front and a back - seemed like magic.

When my grandparents retired, one of my uncles took over the shop and inventory and I assume my cousin who studied fashion and costume design is using it now. I can't remember if I stumbled upon a button machine on eBay by accident or actively searched for it, but I had several on my watch-list for months until I finally bought one last weekend. Ta-dah:

These are the first three buttons I "minted":

Being smaller and lighter, the machine's somewhat inferior in quality to the one my grandparents had (at least in my memory that one was much bigger) as one can't exert that much force/pressure without the machine lifting from the table. Still, I'm pretty excited about it and plan to put it to good use.