![]() ![]() This magazine appearance came to the attention of the producers of The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, and the Button King appeared on the show on March 19, 1987. Through these early media appearances, Stevens gained additional recognition for his unusual work in Star Magazine. These local appearances resulted in a national cable television appearance on CNN. After that the television station NewsChannel 15 in Florence, South Carolina, broadcast a feature segment on him. Stevens had initially appeared in a local newspaper in Bishopville called the Lee County Observer. Songs he had written include "Insomniac Shuffle" and "Poppin' Buttons", which have been made available on a self-released album. Stevens played guitar, banjo and mandolin and sang songs he had written to entertain others and inform them about his unusual story. The Button King Museum opened in 2008 in a building next to his home that was built for him by his children. One of the coffins is intended for use at his funeral, and the other is for display at his museum as a lasting testimony to his work. ![]() Stevens has also covered two coffins with around 600,000 buttons each. He had also sewn, glued or otherwise attached buttons to two other suits, a hearse, an outhouse, a bathtub and sink, a piano, a guitar and a grandfather clock. There are 3,005 buttons on his guitar and 517 buttons on the shoes he first adorned to match his suits. At first he used the title "Button Man" but this soon changed to "the Button King". According to Stevens, he sewed a total of 16,333 buttons onto his denim suit, the buttons took almost three years to sew, and they add 16 pounds in weight to the suit. "I had nothing else to do while my family slept at night," Dalton says. The first item Stevens began sewing buttons onto was a pair of denim pants. In 1983, his inability to sleep after television broadcasting ended at 2 am led him to discover that sewing buttons helped him pass the time while his wife Sue slept. "I have insomnia and I would go sometimes four to five days and nights without sleeping," he explains. Dalton Stevens' hobby of sewing buttons onto things began as a reaction to suffering from chronic insomnia for years.
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