Lots of shelves

My husband flagged a story in Saturday's New York Times about the complicated rules on forgiveness of student loans for people who work in public service.  It grabbed his eye because our daughter-in-law (and her student loans) works for Legal Aid.  When he passed the paper along, I was way more interested in the photo than in the story.

New York Times photo

Here's Jessica Schreiber, who started a nonprofit called Fabscrap, which collects and recycles "pre-consumer textile waste" from designers, garment manufacturers, decorators and others.

I looked up the organization, which is based in New York City, and learned some things I hadn't known.  Such as that in New York, if more than 10% of the waste of a business is textiles, it must recycle.  The waste that Fabscrap collects is sold to designers, students, teachers, artists, sewists and quilters, and I guess anybody else who wants some.  Some are sold online.  Certain materials are shredded for insulation, carpet padding, moving blankets and other industrial products.

Here's the good news for those in the New York area: if you volunteer to help sort the stuff that comes in on the trucks, you can take home anything you want, for free.

But all I could think of when I saw the photo was that Jessica's stash looks kind of lame -- all those shelves, so little fabric!  Any self-respecting quilter of my acquaintance, even me, post-divestiture, could come up with a better-populated backdrop for a fabric-related portrait.