Stitching with Melly

Melly is working on an amazing project she is calling her Rockstar Boro Jacket. She's blogging every day during December and inviting others to work on similar projects and share their ideas and stitching.

I love to stitch... so I could certainly add a little lap project to my pile. In the spirit of "boro," using reclaimed fabric to repair and/or create something new, I chose to begin with this polo shirt. My husband bought it earlier this year and loved it. He's picky about color, fit, length, shape, style, etc and this shirt fit all his requirements. Then it got splattered with some kind of grease. He tried to clean it -- he's usually very adept at laundry and the like. But, he had no luck. In fact, it actually got bleached out in a spot. You can see the offensive area to the right of the buttons.

He was really bummed. Seriously. There was a bit of moaning and groaning when he shuffled through the remaining shirts in our closet. Knowing the powers of e-commerce, I was able to find one online and ordered it straight-away. It came a few days later and we was quite surprised and pleased. Just simple, right? Order a new shirt. But, it was a sweet little series of events that tells a story about how well we know each other and how simple it can be to make each other happy.

So rather than just throw away the stained shirt, I put it in my stash of unexpected fabrics to use in fabric collage, or whatever. Then Melly's boro project came along. The shirt seemed perfect. I've been lusting after interesting hand-made, upcycled and re-fashioned scarves lately. So, I am creating something scarf-like. I began by cutting the shirt into strips about 7 inches wide then I put them right-sides together and started stitching.

I'm thinking the scarf needs those two layers for some body. Other than that, I don't have any plans really. I'll need to add more than just the fabric from the polo shirt to get to a reasonable length. But for now, just stitching the pieces together. I'm not sure I'll stitch or blog every day during December. I'm not even sure I'll finish the scarf before winter has come and gone. But, that's not really the point, right?

Oh... and I didn't cut away the stained area. It will make the scarf more interesting.