It's brass, worn down so thin on one side you can see daylight through it, and it sits right there on the bed of the Singer where I can put my hand on it. Don't wear it. It's too small for my fingers now, and I never did like the feel of metal against the nail. But I need to know where it is.

My grandmother quilted with a scrap of corduroy on her thumb instead, said the thimble made her clumsy. So the thimble sat in her button tin my whole childhood. When she passed, my auntie gave it to me and I set it on the machine and there it's been, through three machines now, two of them broke down and gone.

I'm piecing a top this week out of my late husband's work shirts and a few pieces of a dress my mama made in 1974. Red-brown plaid, and the dress is that pale green that was everywhere back then. Some of the plaid is wore plumb through and I'm leaving it. Not going to patch every hole. Cloth that's been lived in ought to show it.

Anyway. It's strange what we keep close while we work. Not always the tool that does the job. Sometimes it's just the hand that taught you.