Search

I spent the morning sorting a box of offcuts I've been keeping since last spring. Anything smaller than a stamp goes into it. Hand-marbled endpapers from a 1901 hymnal I took apart, mostly. Some scraps I have not touched in eleven months and will not touch. I know this. Still could not do it. The box went back on the shelf, slightly tidier, which is not the same as emptied. The whole point of collage is that you take things apart, so the hoarding makes no sense on paper. Then again the scraps are the work. Every piece I have finished came out of a box like that one. I'm not asking for advice. I think I just wanted to write down that I failed at a very small task, in a room by myself, and it took the whole morning.

Took a cardboard box of torn paper out to the curb this morning, old failed washes I finally gave up on. Neighbor Dave comes shuffling over, all friendly, says "oh good, you're getting rid of those scraps" and asks if they're compostable. They weren't scraps. They were a week of work I'd already mourned and buried. But I stood there and said "yeah sure, probably fine" and let him carry them off. I don't even know why that's stuck in my craw. He wasn't wrong. They were going in the trash either way. But watching him walk away with a box of stuff I'd spent days on, calling it compost... felt like someone grinding out a cigarette on a photo of your dead dog. which is dramatic but you know the feeling. Anyway I'm not speaking to him for a while. He won't notice. that's the part that gets me.

I keep a cardboard box by my sewing chair that started out as a scrap basket and has quietly turned into something else. Every button that falls off, every ribbon from a birthday gift, my youngest granddaughter's first lost tooth that the tooth fairy forgot to come get so I kept it, a bit of my mama's old housecoat that's down to about four inches of cloth now. Nothing in there is useful on its own. But it's all I reach for when I'm stuck on a quilt, every single time. I started a new piece this morning and the plan was red and gold, a church window thing I been carrying in my head. Sat down and it just wouldn't come. So I opened that box and pulled out a pale yellow scrap of my grandmother's apron, faded almost white where she'd wiped her hands a thousand times. That's going in the middle of it now and the whole thing turned. You don't plan them moments. You just keep the box close and let it speak when it's ready.

I got to sorting my scrap basket this morning. Lord, it was a mess. I mean a honest-to-goodness tangle of strips and triangles and odd-shaped pieces I told myself I'd use someday. And I got to noticing how I sort 'em, by color family first, then by what they came from. That little blue floral, that's from a dress my niece wore to Easter Sunday back in ought-eight. That mustard yellow, that's a man's shirt from the thrift that I unpicked for the good seams. I don't just sort fabric, I sort memories. And I thought, well that's me all over. Can't throw nothing away if it carried a story. My grandmother was the same way, she had a button tin that was more family history than any photo album. I told my daughter this morning, I said, I don't know if I'm a quilter who saves things or a saver who quilts. She just laughed and handed me her old jeans with a tear in the knee. "Here, Mama," she said. "Add me to the pile." I reckon that's what I'll do this afternoon. Turn her jeans into something she'll give her own girl one day. Y'all got a scrap basket that's really a memory basket too? Or am I just the old woman who can't let go? 🙂

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? 😂🙏

Now I don't throw away a piece of cloth wider than two fingers. Never have. Started when I was a girl watching my grandmother work, and she'd say baby that's a piece of somebody's dress, you don't throw that out. So it all goes in an old pillowcase on the floor beside my chair. The flowered one, the case itself is torn but I'm not mending a pillowcase I use for scraps. That's how it goes. Well I went to set it out for the wash this morning and I couldn't lift it. Full. Twenty-some years of everybody's leftovers in there. Mama's church dress, my son's shirt from the job he hated, my granddaughter's first Easter dress, all of it cut down to pieces not big enough for anything. I sat down on the floor with it. I got a quilt in my head for those pieces and I've had it in my head going on three years now. Can't start it because it means cutting into the last of certain cloths, and once it's cut it's cut. You can't undo it. Mm. That's the trouble with this work. You hold a piece of your mother's hem in your hand and you got to decide if it becomes a quilt or stays a scrap forever. Might start it this week. Might sit with it another three years. The Lord gives you the cloth, He don't tell you the day.

there's a torn piece from a 1978 Sears catalog in the bottom corner of the piece on my table. it's been sitting there unmatched for two weeks because I couldn't find a scrap the right shade of faded. today I found one. spent 40 minutes trimming it to fit. the photograph it's butted up against is a picture of a motel sign I took on a drive last spring that I honestly don't care about. I've been telling myself for a month I'd pull it and start over with something better. so I just spent 40 minutes serving a photograph I'm going to throw away. and I'll probably do it again tomorrow, and the day after, because I keep finding reasons not to look at the actual problem, which is that the whole piece is polite. it's nice. it's fine. nothing in it is fighting anything. I made a thing with no tension in it and I keep dressing the edges instead of admitting that. anyway the paper matches beautifully.

Y'all ever catch yourself doing something in the studio that don't feel like much, but if you stop and think about it, it's practically prayer? I got this old tin cookie box my mama kept buttons in, and now I keep my smallest scraps in it. Every time I sit down to start something new, I dump em out on the table and just… sort em. Reds together, blues together, the browns and oranges that nobody quite knows what to do with, they get their own little pile. I ain't even decided what I'm making yet. But my hands need to do that first. Like saying hello before you launch into a conversation. My granddaughter watches me do it and says "Mama Gloria, you just playing with fabric." And she ain't wrong. But that's how the good ones start. You gotta let your hands wander before they know where they're going. Anybody else got a little ritual like that, something that don't look like work but you can't start without it?

My Bologna neighbor, who I've said good morning to for four years, watches me haul a stack of zinc and copper plates up three flights every few weeks. Today he finally asked, with genuine concern in his voice, if I was "doing some kind of scrap metal art marathon" and whether I needed a hand because the plates looked "heavy for my frame." I thanked him and said no, it's printmaking, it's etching. He nodded slowly and said, "Ah, like the recycling." Not the worst interpretation. Honestly some days that's exactly what it is. I keep the bad plates, you know, the ones that printed wrong or the ground failed, and I have a whole graveyard of them under the studio table because I can't throw metal away. It's a hoarding problem disguised as ecological conscience. So maybe he's not wrong. The marathon part I can't defend. I did not tell him that the plates are copper because copper holds a line better than zinc and that I think about this more than I think about most people in my life. Some conversations stay at the door.

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.

There's a five-gallon bucket under my main bench that's been collecting offcuts for two years now. Granite chips, bits of alabaster, broken corners off pieces I finished or ruined. I tell myself I'll use them for something someday. Mosaic maybe. Or just crush them for texture in a base. I've never done it. I just keep dropping scraps in there and looking at it sometimes. Some habits are just habits. Not everything needs a reason. But I notice the bucket when I'm stuck on something and it's the only thing in the shop I don't have an opinion about.

There is a piece of primed linen in the pocket of my painting coat, about the size of a playing card. It has been there since maybe February. When I am stuck, and I mean really stuck, three hours on an elbow that will not sit right, I take it out and I rub my thumb across the weave. That is all I do. Then I put it back and pick up the brush again, and usually the thing I was fighting is not the thing that was wrong anyway. My daughter finds this hilarious. She says it is a worry stone for a woman who has forgotten how to worry properly. She is not entirely wrong. What I like about it is that it is the one object in the studio that asks nothing of me. Every other thing in the room is a job. The palette has to be scraped, the turps jar is a disgrace, there is a tube of lead white I have been nursing along for two weeks like a sick relative. The linen scrap just sits there. It is primed, it is dry, it is fine. I mention it because I read somewhere this week that you are supposed to have a morning routine with cold water and a notebook and I thought, no, my ritual is a square of fabric in a pocket. Bof. Whatever works.

There's a galvanized tub under the bench at the shop, full of steel drops. Anything under about six inches goes in. Some of it is 4140 from a piece I did for a hospital in '09. Some of it is trash and I know it's trash. I've pulled from that bin twice. Once for a bracket that didn't need to be pretty, once for a maquette armature. It weighs somewhere around eighty pounds now and I've moved it three times, including once across state lines, which meant strapping it in the truck like it was something. The honest reason it's still there is that when you cut a piece you've spent weeks on, throwing the offcuts in the scrap hopper feels like throwing the piece away. So I keep a tub instead. It's not practical. It's a superstition with a lid on it. That's mine. Somebody tell me theirs isn't weirder.

Was stuck for three weeks on a commission piece. Big granite commission, the kind you cant mess up. I kept walking around it, chalking lines, erasing them. Gave up one afternoon and grabbed a chunk of steel scrap from the bin behind the shop. Just fooling around, letting the welder do what it wanted. Three hours later I had a small piece I actually like better than anything I've made this year. Walked back to the granite with fresh eyes and cut the first real line in it the next morning. Funny how that works. The pressure piece you cant touch and the throwaway piece you can't stop. I've done this long enough to know you can't force it, but I still forget every time.

Not going to pretend I have any idea what I'm doing on here. My daughter set this account up and I'm trying. But here's what actually worked for me this year. There's a stone yard about 40 minutes from the studio. Big operation, commercial stuff, countertops and monuments. They've got a pile out back of broken slabs, cutoffs, chunks with veins running the wrong way. Stuff they'd pay to haul off. I went in person three times over two months. Brought coffee once. Just asked if I could pick through it. They finally said fine, just sign the waiver. I've pulled maybe 800 pounds of good marble and granite out of there so far. Paid nothing. And the crazy part is, a local contractor saw me loading pieces into my truck one day and asked what I was doing. That turned into a commission. Then the yard guys tell their customers about me sometimes when someone wants something custom. Cost me about 12 bucks in gas and some patience. Way better return than the Instagram ads my daughter set up for me. Those got me nothing but spam accounts telling me my work is "mesmerizing." Anyway. If you work with physical materials, find the local supplier's scrap pile. Bring coffee. Ask nice. That's the whole strategy.

I got a basket beside my chair catches every scrap that ain't big enough to save, and I been meaning to clean it out for I don't know how long. Yesterday I finally did and child, you should have seen it. Three generations of dresses in there. My mama's Sunday apron print. A piece of the curtains from the house I grew up in, which I didn't even know I still had. Bits from baby blankets I made for grandbabies who are grown now with babies of their own. I couldn't throw none of it away. Just put it all back in the basket and set it next to me again. Some folks would call that hoarding. I call it remembering, and there's a difference though I can't always tell you where the line is. Every now and again I'll pull a piece out while I'm waiting on something and just hold it. That's the whole of it. That's the quilt work, before the needle ever comes out.

Needed four more inches of 3/4 round bar to finish a joint and I was out of stock. Stopped the weld, stood there swearing at the bench for a minute. Then I remembered the offcut bucket under the table that I keep meaning to haul to the scrappers. Thirty years of not throwing anything away finally paid for its rent. Dug out a piece of the same stock from some job back in the 90s, cut it, fit it, burned it in. The whole arc felt smoother than it should have. Took a photo of the finished weld to show the guy I apprenticed under. He'd have called me a fool for working with salvaged material, then pointed out where the puddle was off. Anyway. Keep your scraps. The day comes. That offcut bucket is overdue to be emptied. Maybe next week. Probably not.

Three years. Three years this thing sat under my workbench wrapped in old sheets, half-cut, wrong, not working. It's a portrait of my yiayia's hands, she was a seamstress, those hands knew things, and I could not get the light right in the smalti. The gold kept coming out flat, like a coin, not like afternoon sun on old skin. Took it back out two months ago and finally saw what was wrong. Wrong andamento, wrong direction of the cuts. I'd been setting the tesserae like fabric folds instead of like hands. Had to pull half of it out and start again. Sent photos to the client this afternoon. She cried. So did I, a bit, alone in the studio with the cats looking at me like I'd lost it. Anyway. Sometimes the work needs to wait until you're ready for it. That's the thing nobody tells you.

Studio floor is currently a museum of other people's junk. Sorting for the autumn show, three years of hoarding, and there is one piece I keep walking around: a cast-iron stove door, rusted shut, from a flat on Vinohradská that got gutted last year. It's the best object in the room and I won't put it in. Reason is stupid. It's too good on its own. You set it down anywhere and it does the whole job by itself, and then the room around it just becomes a plinth for a nice rusty thing. Which is fine, that's a career, plenty of people do it, but it's not what I've spent thirty years learning to do. So it sits in the corner and I build everything else and every morning I look at it like a dog at a table. I know the honest answer is probably "use it and stop being precious," and I also know that answer is a trap. Sometimes the object that carries the piece is the one that kills it. Mostly writing this down so I stop pretending it isn't the actual problem.

I spent three weeks fighting a harbor scene and finally gave up on it one night, shoved it in the back of my closet. Pulled it out two months later mostly to see if the canvas was worth reusing, and you know what, it was actually fine. A few glazes later I really liked it. Ended up hanging it at a little craft fair in November. Not expecting anything from it, it was the piece I kept apologizing for when people stopped at my table. A woman came back twice to look at it and ended up asking if I could do something similar for her lake house. Smaller, different colors, but same idea. She just sent me the deposit. I keep thinking about how close that painting came to being gessoed over. Also the timing is funny because I'm exactly the kind of person who would've talked myself out of even putting it on the table. Glad I didn't.