Shirt Rescue, Take Two

Again I find myself staring at another shirt in dire need of rescue. Same owner, different trauma. This time the shirt faced torture by bleach. ("Children--one last time: do not clean the bathroom in your good school clothes! Or THIS may happen to you!" With graphic visuals, of course.) So now it's a new-ish (naturally, since old clothes never get ruined. EVER.) turquoise tee with a trail of white spots running down the front. What's a provident mom to do?

Well, if I had dye in the studio (hahahaha) I could strip the color and re-dye it. Sadly, no dye--all used up in projects previous to this blog. But I do have lots of fabric. (See photo above for confirmation of this statement.) So let's take bleached-out lemons and make cheerful lemonade.

I found two fabrics I liked. One--appropriately enough --was left over from my wedding dress. (Considering that's the project that has made all subsequent projects necessary and possible.) Another was a remnant from pajamas I made last Christmas.

I fused both fabrics to iron-on interfacing, to make sure when they were cut and later washed they wouldn't fray to shreds, since there would be no edge treatment. Then I traced circles (with the classic sewing tool, a drinking glass) of three different sizes, and cut them out.

I made flowers from the circles--each circle becoming a petal. I folded each circle into quarters, and pressed them. With washing they've unfolded a bit, just enough to give additional dimension to the petals. Then I arranged the petals, four to a flower, to cover the bleach spots. (If you can't beat them, hide them in plain sight!) I used my trusty fabric glue to fix them in place, and to prevent sliding when it was time to sew the petals down.

The petals were sewn down the middle of each, so the sides could puff out from the center. Extra dimension and depth are my friends. To finish the flowers, I added buttons (saved from a dress I made and wore in college. And no, I'm not really a pack rat! I just sound like one when blogging.) to the center of each. Then I added machine embroidery to create the stems of the flowers.

I think it turned out quite well, and now it's Miss Elle's favorite shirt. Go figure. (Don't even THINK about doing this to your other shirts, Missy! I may not be this creative next time.)

Freeze Frame

A few years ago my  baby brother (all of six feet and several pounds of him. "Baby" is a relative term here) made me picture frames for Christmas, and we used them, standard-style: one large picture per frame, parents and children. Ho hum. Until we had another child, and then another, and suddenly there weren't enough frames to use them as I had been doing, and into the studio (hahahahaha) they went.

They've languished there long enough, I think, so I pulled them out to put them to new use. I wanted something to lend some interest to a long stretch of wall going up the stairs, but I didn't want anything standard: no 8x10 photos, no self-portraits, no silhouettes. I wanted something that could be changed easily, because the one constant of children is that there is no constant.

In our family room we have a LARGE fabric-covered bulletin board. Four feet by eight feet large. It dominates the wall over the couch, and I love that I can pin stuff up there, rearrange it, and pull it down without committing pin marks to eternity. So why not so the same thing in miniature?

Our bulletin board is made of sound board. We got it at Home Depot, and it's relatively inexpensive, and
I had some scraps left over. It is, however, a royal messy pain in the patoot to cut. (It might have helped to have done so with a saw, but all I had were a utility knife--wholly inadequate, and a bread knife--which will never be the same again.) The debris field was significant.

After I roughly--very roughly--cut the sound board to fit the frames, I covered each one with a scrap of fabric (no shortage of that around here, no matter how much I use or give away), and secured them with staples. Then I inserted the boards into the frames, set them in with more staples (nit a permanent job, but I might want to reuse them later on.), attached hanging hardware, and put them up.

I like them even without the photos--sort of abstract art-inspired. But I eventually put pictures in, using silver thumb tack, applied so the tacks don't puncture the pictures, but just "push" them securely to the board. That way I can change the pictures at will, without making holes in something I might actually scrapbook if I suffer major brain trauma that alters my personality and I start doing such things.

(Wasn't Miss Elle sweet as a baby? They all start out that way. Fakers!)

I have room on each frame to add another picture, and the freedom to re-arrange the pictures as often as I like. Frugality and freedom--good things come in alliterative pairs.