Mishap Remedy

A few years ago, our clothes dryer slowly started to eat our clothing. It mysteriously chewed little holes in our knits and delicates. At random, it made brown permanent stains on our more durable clothing, especially on collars.

Turns out, the drum glides were worn out, causing the dryer drum to sit off balance. Because the drum was off balance, there was a gap at the front of the dryer drum, where our clothes tended to get caught and become marked or shredded from the friction. Hubby fixed the mishap, but it wreaked havoc on a lot of our clothing. Some of the stains eventually disappeared over several years of washing, but other stains remained. The holes are today's reminders of the incident.

One of the victims of the dryer drum mishap was Hubby's beloved button-down shirt. The collar looked like it fell into poop. Not a good look. He was pretty partial to the shirt and resents the dryer to this day. I told him that I'm up for the challenge of fixing his shirt (somehow) so that he did not have to part with it. He married a Cheapskate, after all!

Here's a close-up view of the stain on his collar. I decided to stencil something over the stain to correct this mishap. I used contact paper as my stencil material and drew something Hubby is obsessed with--sailboats. After drawing, I cut the design carefully with an X-acto knife. I peeled off the backing of the contact paper and re-positioned the stencil several times to ensure it adequately covers the stain.

Anytime you work on a specific facet of clothing, it's a good idea to back off and look at it once more before beginning work. Allow the shirt hang naturally, to ensure the new "art-dition" (*pun, intended*) hangs at a level view when worn. 

I used fabric paint and a sponge brush, and lightly dabbed in the negative space of the handmade stencil. Allow to dry, THEN peel off stencil. There were still a few brown marks underneath the boat so I free-handed some ocean waves to masque the stains accordingly.

Hubby was happy he could keep his shirt and loved the nautical theme. Fix some of your ruined clothing with personalized paintwork. There is a remedy for everything.