Stitch History – Yorkshire & Dorset Buttons
Learn to make your own woven buttons.
These beautiful woven buttons once adorned the finest clothes worn in the 17th and 18th centuries, in fact there is a waistcoat in our very own Craven Museum collection which shows some lovely examples of the craft.
Button making is thought to have started in Dorset when Abraham Case brought examples of fabric buttons back from Europe. The cottage industry flourished in Dorset, but other regions developed their own styles with Macclesfield and Yorkshire amongst them.
Dorset buttons are stitched and woven around a brass ring and are flat. Intricate designs can be worked in the pattern of weaving or they can be embellished with beads and sequins to create a decorative brooch. Yorkshire buttons are woven around a template and then stuffed to form a round ball. They are functional buttons but work well as decoration too.
The two-hour workshop will teach both techniques and participants will have an opportunity to make more than one example to take home as time allows.
