Save Your Shirt!

I am a mess. A really, really messy person. The kind of messy person who wears stains on the front of her favorite shirt. Make that every shirt.  The kind of messy person who kills multiple trees every year in paper towels.

Meet Exhibit A.  [photo enhanced to show stain] 

Most of my shirts look like this within a couple of wearings. I've tried several ways to camouflage the stains: sweaters (too hot), scarves (too heavy on my neck), brooch (on a tee shirt--no), nothing. Really nothing works. It's hopeless. Until now.

It's quite simple and I should have gotten off my lazy end much sooner.  Here it is:

Cute, cute. Easy peasy and lemon squeezy. Cover the mess with applique. The cuter the applique, the better the distraction.

I started with a couple of my Accuquilt Studio dies.

Added a few scraps from a friend. 

A few flowers and a birdie later, the stain is covered and the tee is a little cuter for the change. At least now I can wear it in public!

Did I say all of my shirts have stains? Maybe I exaggerated a little, but the truth is that several do. Since the first one came out so cute, I decided to work on one more. This time I used my own fabric but the same friend (I love you, Leta), who happens to be a great artist and art teacher, made me a set of monogram appliques. I wrote about the shirts that I appliqued for my girls as Christmas gifts a year ago. 

This one, though, is all mine and does a great job of covering the stain that is hiding right under the largest part of the middle M. How convenient is that?

I'm loving the polka dots! The darkest ones are an almost perfect match to the true color of the shirt. Just so happens that this deep blue is one that looks really good with my skin tone. I call it a pasty yellowish off-white. Definitely my face needs some color in my clothing.