It's the Pits

I took my own advice from yesterday and just mended the pits on no less than four t-shirts. I had to use iron-on patches because they had been mended once already by sewing. The fabric is wearing out but the patches should hold for a while.

Did I mention these are among my four favorite t-shirts? In fact, I painted one myself as an experiment a number of years ago. It's a long story. Bear with me.

You see, we lived in a small community with a high percentage of art cars. We had an old car and thought it'd be fun to do something creative with it. My sweetie cut out life-size animal tracks so we could paint it to look like critters were running all over the outside of the car. We used tracks from five native species, selecting a different color for each one. Using information from a book on identifying tracks, we even painted them in the pattern they would leave behind if the animal really did walk or trot across the car.

Unfortunately, we made one critical error. We used latex paint. This would have been fine if it had several days to cure. However, as luck would have it, there was an unexpected rain shower the following day. Entire tracks loosened by the rain peeled off the car as we drove down the highway. Our art car became a performance art car. I wonder what the car behind us thought of the yellow turkey tracks flying through the air...

I decided it would be interesting to paint the tracks on a t-shirt. I used the same stencils and sponged on the paint, just like we did for the car. I couldn't space the tracks out as much, though. When the paint was dry, I turned the shirt inside out and popped it in the dryer for a little while to cure the paint. It's held up all these years and is still one of my favorite shirts, despite now being too big for me.

Key to the tracks: coyote in blue, bobcat in red, and wild turkey in yellow. (Note patch under armpit on left of photo.)


Key to the tracks: mule deer in orange, bobcat in red, and raccoon in purple.

I hope the patches hold up because I plan to wear my comfy t-shirts until they fall apart.