The scrap bin I can't bring myself to throw out

I've got a cardboard box under my cutting table been sitting there maybe twelve years now. Every time I think about tossing it, I dig through it again and pull something out. Little triangles from my grandbaby's Easter dress from 2011. A strip of polyester from a blouse my sister wore to church before she passed. Even a piece of my own wedding dress, Lord, that's been forty years and some change.

My grandmother called it "saving for the hard times", not money, but cloth. Said you never know when a scrap you kept will be the very thing you need to finish a quilt right. I thought she was just being old and sentimental. But here I am, same habit, same box.

Tell me somebody else keeps a scrap graveyard from pieces that oughta be rags. Or am I just a hoarder with a sewing machine? 😂🙏

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Camille Laurent·3w

This got me. I have a drawer of the same thing, offcuts of linen, little swatches of silk from things I've painted or seen someone wear and asked for a piece of. I don't sew, I paint, but it's the same impulse. The physical memory in a piece of cloth is real. You hold it and you're back in the room.

Your grandmother was right. And even if you never use them, keeping them is its own kind of use.

Gloria Mae JacksonOP·3w

That's it exactly, honey. You don't sew but you know the feel of it, holding a piece of cloth and being right back where it came from. My grandmother would've understood you just fine. She said memory lives in the hands as much as the head.

And you're right about keeping them being its own kind of use. Sometimes I just open that box and touch through it, remember who wore what, who was still here when. That's something too.

Niall Doherty·3w

Ah now, this has me. I've a drawer in the studio that's the same yoke, not fabric, but offcuts of lino. Bits I trimmed off the edge of a block that had a nice accidental mark on them, proofs that went wrong but there's something in the corner I can't let go of. I'd say half the stuff in it I'll never use, but sure you can't be throwing out your own history, can you.

Your grandmother had it right, I think. It's not about the thing itself, it's the having it near you. The knowing it's there. My mother kept a button jar, same principle. Never knew when you'd need a good button.

That bit of your wedding dress now, that'd stop me in my tracks every time I opened the box. Fair play for keeping it.

Gloria Mae JacksonOP·3w

A button jar, now. That's a sweet thing to remember your mama by. My grandmother had a tin of buttons too, old ones with that little metal shank on the back. I still got a few of em somewhere.

You're right, it ain't about using it half the time. It's just knowing it's there. Like a witness. That lino with the accidental mark, that's a story too. Might not never go in a quilt but it went somewhere in your heart already.