My dad's shirt

My mother was throwing away some really old and worn out clothes and I noticed my dad's favourite shirt in the pile. I quickly snatched it away, since it brought back some really nice memories. I guess he has always had it. It was bought in the seventies and worn throughout the eighties, even though my mother hate it and thought it very old fashioned. My father didn't care, it was his and not hers.

When after so many decades I got my hands on the shirt, the fabric was almost too worn out, but I loved it and the memories and just had to create something from it. The sleeves had small holes in them, since my father had used the shirt when welding. There was also tiny specs of white paint in several places, probably even in several shades from different painting projects. Nevertheless, the shirt still looked OK, since the pattern is quite restless and covered most of the paint and holes, if you do not look too closely (and I wasn't going to!). I decided to transform it to a shirt for Emma. The shirt was very narrow, so I had to plan my work very carefully. Here is the original shirt, looking a bit neglected:

 

I removed the pocket, but the colours were much brighter at the spot where I had removed the pocket, so I had to come up with some solution to cover the different shades of fabric. I decided to make a brooch from some odd bits of eyelet lace,  an old coat button and some satin ribbon from a gift packaging and attach that to the shirt. It worked! To make the shirt a bit prettier, I added lace to the collar and sew the pocket to the side. The pocket is also covering some paint specs.  As an after thought, I decided to add some lace to the pocket as well, but was too lazy to detach the pocket and just sew the lace by hand to the pocket edge. I am not going to show any close ups of that, that's for sure :)

 

 

My dad loves the end result :)