Rescue Operation

Miss Elle is hard on her clothes. I realize this is most likely normal, since I hear a lot of mothers complaining about the various atrocities committed on clothing. Still, to see a perfectly innocent t-shirt lying stricken in a laundry basket--having done nothing to merit the punishment inflicted on it, beyond maybe straying too closely to the freshly-painted wall or the nail sticking out of the door jamb--my heart bleeds. "That," I say, to no one in particular, but hoping my children are listening while in instructable frames of mind, "is a waste of perfectly good money. Just look at it--good for nothing more than the rag bag now. Poor t-shirt, to have its promising life cut tragically short." (I throw in the extra pathos in the usually vain attempt to play on my children's otherwise steely heartstrings. Perhaps I think shedding a tear or two for the lost of the laundry will prevent them from committing clothing-related barbarities later in the day. Hope springs eternal.)

In months past I would have cut the shirt up for weaving fodder--I have a lovely collection of t-shirt strip balls, just waiting for the day I can clear a path to the loom and finally put them into the rug I've been planning for nigh unto five years now. But I have more than enough material for this projected rug, and a good non-holey t-shirt should have another chance at life, whatever its past sins may have been. So lately I've become a salvager of shirts--creatively trying to overcome whatever damage has been done in the names of education, entertainment, and/or high-explosives experimentation.

A while ago, Elle dumped into the laundry a shirt which had somehow been stained with paint. Red acrylic paint, on a white t-shirt. And I knew it was acrylic, because a dried glob of it was still there, clinging with almost child-like stubbornness. "And what," I thought in despair, "am I to do with this?" Two stain treatments and a bleach wash later, the stain was just as present (but the spaghetti stains had faded somewhat--a minor but gratifying triumph for me.) Time to break out the odds and ends from the studio (hahahahaha).

It just so happens that my sister, ever thoughtful and somehow prescient, had given me several spools of eyelet trim in assorted colors, and I had been a amasser of useful buttons for years (Cheap, folks, I'm cheap!). I was going to save this shirt, so help me Hannah!

I wanted the eyelet to look as if it had been there originally--not like I had attempted a salvage, so I opened up the shoulder seams, inserted the eyelet, then closed them again. Simple.

I once heard the statement that you should never trust your sewing project to something as dumb as pins. I figure sewing glue is smarter, so I basted the eyelet down with it, then pinned. Two methods are better than one--and I hoped their collective IQ would assure success here.

Once the glue was dry I sewed the eyelet down, making sure to tuck the lower edges back under the hem. 

Then I brought out the button jar--reds and pinks to match the eyelet, and to better disguise the red paint stain. (That's me, always thinking!) I didn't want a formal, graduated arrangement of buttons--too staid, so I mixed several shades of pink and red, and multiple sizes of buttons randomly.

Once I sewed them on, I permanized the buttons with  a dab of glue on each--no unraveling stitches here.

I like how it turned out, and Miss Elle has been told her "new" shirt is "cute" by the ultimate fashion authority: another seven-year-old. A win all around.

Since I used items pulled from my stash the total cost for this project= nothing. That's a price I can live with.