The fabric scrap drawer finally got too full to close
I got a drawer in my sewing room that catches every scrap too small to make anything of but too pretty to throw out. Lord, that drawer has been getting harder and harder to push shut for a year now, and this morning I finally said enough, sat down on the floor with it spilling all over my lap.
You know what I found in there? A little square of my mama's old housedress, mustard yellow with tiny white flowers, must be fifty years old. And a strip of corduroy from one of my son's little coats when he was maybe four. I sat right there on that linoleum holding them and didn't move for I don't know how long.
I did throw a few things out. Not many. But I sat those little pieces on the ironing board and I'm going to piece them into something proper instead of letting them live in the dark. My grandmother would've said I was finally learning sense. Probably she'd say it while laughing at me for taking so long to get there.
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this is so real though. i have a drawer like this but it's not fabric, it's just... paint tubes with a squeeze left in them i can't bring myself to toss. every time i open it i'm like "that's a weird shade of green, i'll never use that" and then i do not throw it away. three years now.
the part about finding the mustard yellow piece of your mama's dress hit me though. that's the thing about keeping scraps, you're not keeping the fabric, you're keeping the moment you'll inevitably have sitting on the floor with it. glad you sat down with it instead of just shoving it closed one more time lol.
Paint tubes with a squeeze left. I know that drawer too, only mine is a bucket of offcuts and odd bits of steel rod I'll never use. Same damn thing though. You tell yourself it's practical, it's material, but really you just don't want to be the one who finally throws it out.
That part about the moment on the floor. It's true. I don't think people realize how much of the making is just sitting with the stuff before you do anything with it. The fabric holds it whether you ever cut into it or not.
Glad you didn't shove it closed. Some things need to sit there out in the open a while.
Steel rod now, and offcuts of it at that. I do believe that's a first for me to hear in this thread, and I love it. Different stuff, same heart.
You said it better than I could ever put it. That sitting with it is half the making. My grandmother used to say the fabric preaches before you ever lay a needle to it, and I thought she just meant patience. No, she meant it holds the story whether or not you ever do a thing with it. Some things just need to be witnessed.
And baby, you got it right about being the one who finally throws it out. That's the weight of it, isn't it. Nobody wants to be that one.
Keep your bucket. Let it sit there in the open. It'll tell you what it's for when the time comes.
Baby, you get it exactly. That's the whole thing right there, you ain't keeping the tube of paint, you're keeping the day you used it, the thing you were making, who you were when you squeezed it. That weird shade of green is holding a memory you haven't even had yet.
I swear, that mustard yellow piece sat in that drawer for fifty years and I never once looked at it. But the moment I pulled it out and saw my mama in it, I couldn't put it back down. That's what all that clutter is, honey. It's time in a box, just waiting on you.
Keep your paint tubes. One day you'll sit down with that weird green and you'll know exactly why you kept it. And it won't feel silly at all. 🙂