Revival

Collar frayed to the point to disintegration, armpit holes you could drive a truck through, even the patched bleach-spot holes have holes. But I love this shirt. I don't know why, but I find the dinosaur chasing the fleeing vegetables stupidly hilarious. So, we have project #1 to get reacquainted with the ol' sewing machine.

First, I turned the kelly green dino shirt inside-out, taped it to a sunny window, and traced around the image with a chalk pencil (you can just make out the yellow chalk lines in the pic above). Then I cut out the front of the kelly green shirt, including the arm seams and collar. After ironing and turning the dark green shirt inside-out, I sprayed the front with washable adhesive. Then, carefully, I matched the kelly green shirt's collar and arm seams with the dark green shirt's and smoothed it onto the tacky adhesive.

Using a ballpoint needle and wide zigzag stitch, I ever-so-slowly stitched around the chalk line.

Then turned everything right-side-out and, breath held, snipped into the dark green shirt and peeled it away from the adhesive. I trimmed as close to the stitch line as I comfortably could, and then made a second pass with the zigzag stitch, all the way around the cut edge, this time from the front. Oh, yeah, I also trimmed the kelly green shirt to within about a half-inch of the stitches.

Ta-dah! New shirt that can comfortably be worn in public. In polite company, even. 

One last move. Instead of my usual jotting down of stitch length and gauge and whatever else I think might be helpful on whatever tiny scrap of paper or envelope or bill that might be handy (which history proves will disappear as soon as I go looking for it), I actually wrote down what I did in a notebook. Imagine. Having all my sewing notes and ideas for improvement in one place. Something that can be located and referred to later. Crazy, I know. With 3 more t-shirt revivals on deck, these notes will be useful. I mean, I am pretty good at this point in my life at reinventing the wheel every. single. time. I make something. But I'm thinking that maybe, just maybe, there might be a more efficient and less maddening way to proceed. The jury is out.