Virginia Real : Mountain Girl Pearls...

July 21, 2014

I’m the kind of person who likes to be productive for as many (awake) hours of the day as possible. Maybe it’s because I am a “Type A” personality. Maybe it’s because I grew up in a family where the saying “an idle mind is the devil’s workshop” was ranked right up there with the Ten Commandments. I don’t know, but what really matters is that I believe that God only gives us so many hours on this Earth and I want to make the most of every minute. I like to think I do this by channeling my creative energy into making things that are useful; things that could quite possibly make it into the next generation or even into the next century. I love anything that can stand up to the wear and tear of daily life like braided rugs, quilts, knitted items, stained glass, etc. and actually improve with age. I tend to gravitate toward making things that are durable as well as functional…and it gives me a tremendous amount of self-satisfaction if those items are pretty as well.

Recently, I crocheted some necklaces that I affectionately call, “Mountain Girl Pearls”. So far, I’ve made them in pale blue, off-white, mint green, red, and am currently working on one that is pink. The base of the necklace is crocheted with scallops on the bottom edge. I sew matching colors (or not matching colors) of buttons of varying sizes onto the scallops. The necklace fastens with another button that fits through a crocheted opening. My first off-white necklace turned out to be fairly attractive. Then I envisioned what a red one might look like. After that one was finished, I thought about using paler colors and they turned out nicely as well. Before I knew it, I had a collection of six necklaces and was churning them out rather quickly as I moved through the thread colors that the craft store had available.

I came up with the name “Mountain Girl Pearls” because, in times past, most mountain women saved everything they possibly could. This included fabric, zippers and buttons from worn out or outgrown clothing. Buttons were a precious commodity to mountain women. I recall when I was young that my Momma and my Granny both had “button boxes”. After I grew up and moved into my own place, I started my own button collection. I have buttons that I’ve removed from the wool clothing used to make my braided rugs, buttons purchased at yard sales and thrift shops for almost nothing, and buttons that I’ve bought from the clearance bins at fabric stores. My collection has, over the years, somehow morphed from one small container to one jar and two good-sized tins of buttons. I will probably never use all of these buttons in my lifetime. However, I hope that they will eventually fall into the hands of someone who will treasure them just as much as I do, and as my mother did, and as my grandmother did.

For now, I’m content with recycling some of my precious buttons and turning them into sweet little necklaces. (Charming says that I need to consider parting with these and selling them on etsy.com or some other venue…at the rate I’m churning them out, I think he fears that if I die first he’ll be stuck with a dresser drawer full of ‘em! I'm trying to convince him to think of them as an "inheritance" not a "burden".)