I accept payment in Tshirts now (not really)

I totally thought I'd conquered the Tshirt Glut by making my one fancy drape-neck top from that big blue abandoned shirt.

I was like, pshaw! I am SO the boss of Tshirts.

I will no longer have to face the conflict that arises when I am offered a free Tshirt where I, at once, really want it because HELLO it's a free something and then remember that HELLO I have a hundred free somethings clogging up my dresser drawers because I never wear free somethings because they never fit right.

I could now apply reason to these decisions.

Reason like, if the shirt has a small logo in a remote area of the shirt and is available in an XL, I can take it, but if there's an enormous ugly logo located in the dead center or it's only available in a child's small, I can not.

Basically, I can assess the drape-neck top makeability of a free Tshirt and decide whether it's worthy of coming to my house to be dismantled.

This is a very freeing concept. I am in control of my Tshirt acceptance policies! This is a big step! Now I should probably move on to things more relevant in every day life by, say, scrutinizing my 401K plan for diversification or something else a grown-up might do.

But that's for later.

For now, however, I can exercise my Tshirt acceptance policies. Even when these policies must be applied to the mail.

See, the AIDS Walk, she creates a lot of Tshirts. And then, there aren't enough bodies to wear all these Tshirts, so they get sent to anyone and everyone whose name has ever graced the AIDS Walk mailing lists. I think, anyway, because that's the only reason one would have shown up for Bubba because he signed up to NOT receive a Tshirt regardless of his fundraising amount.

But there was the shirt in the mail all the same.

Thankfully though, he wears an XL, which they remembered from previous years, and so the shirt that showed up fit the profile! Just like at the airport! Except no one had to take off their shoes or submit to a rectal exam in order to receive the shirt.

And thank god for that.

And also thank you to Bubba for being so nice and not judgmental about my penchant for Yard Fashion by immediately handing over this perfect shirt specimen for reassembly.

The dismantling happened very quickly.

Despite the rather large design on the front, I was able to make it work by thinking like a rational person and cutting the smaller pattern piece for the back of the new shirt from the smaller blank area of the dismantled shirt.

Sometimes I can be as smart as a pencil eraser and it never fails to amaze me.

Also unbelievable was when I went to cut out the larger pattern piece from the back of the old shirt and found that LO there was all this open blank space from which to cut my beautiful future draped neck.

Wonders never cease.

Actually, I credit this new-found knowledge and wisdom to having made the shirt once first and realizing my mistakes in real time. As you've probably come to understand, I'm one who must make mistakes in order to learn instead of listen closely when someone tells me what NOT to do. Because I'm slow. And impatient. And all the good things that come with being me.

Also good was that this second shirt took me all of 30 minutes to make from my gifted Tshirt, most of the time spent making the dumb bias tape (making bias tape from Tshirt cotton is not a fun hobby) of which I only used about half. See, you're 'sposed to tape along the armholes and front and back on the neckline, but I feel like that is too much.

I decided that my #2 shirt didn't need a taped drape neck, so I just sewed a zigzag hem along the cut edge and called it a happy day.

And then, to quote a lovely man (Bubba), I had a fabulous fucking day in my wrinkled fucking shirt.

I put this shirt on and promptly wore it for two days in a row.