February Photos Day Seven: Button

Seems a strange subject for a photo, but okay.  Here ya go:

I bought this dress, which is apparently hand-made, at Goodwill.  It's a lovely bit of work.  The smocking alone must have taken ages.  There was nothing wrong with it, save it was missing one button and the other three were hanging on by threads.  So I paid a dollar for a dress that would surely retail for about $40 new (and represents God alone knows how many woman-hours of skill) and broke out the spare buttons at home.

I really, really don't understand giving away a dress for want of buttons.  It's not the only one I've bought under similar circumstances.  Y'all, a button is not hard to sew.  And yet, even the smallest bit of hand-sewing seems to be too much to ask these days.  I'm admittedly not good at machine sewing (for some reason, it is a skill I do not retain; I've learned and forgotten how to do it easily half a dozen times over the years), but you don't need to thread a machine to put on a button, just a needle.

How is button-sewing a lost art?