I've got a five gallon bucket under my cutting table that's nothing but selvage strips. Been dropping them in there since, mm, I want to say 2019. Every last one. The pinked edges, the little dots of color where the printing runs out, the name of the mill sometimes if I'm lucky.

My grandson came by Saturday to put up the storm windows and he looked in that bucket and said "Mama Glo, that's trash." I said baby, that is not trash, that is a quilt I ain't made yet.

Thing is, I don't know if that's true anymore. I've made two selvage quilts off that bucket and it don't look like it's gone down any. So either I'm fooling myself or I'm a slow worker, and I've been sewing fifty-some years so it ain't the second one.

My grandmother kept a coffee can of scraps on the windowsill. Just one can. When it got full she'd piece it up into something, she didn't sort or plan, just sewed. I've got a bucket the size of a toddler and I sort by width.

I'm not saying she was better. I'm saying she knew when to stop saving.