laundry mistakes and how I saved them

Of course there is back story for this post. One Sunday James and I visited a church small group where a guy was sharing something he had learned from their church's recent marriage retreat. Apparently, at the retreat they had learned, "If I'm doing it, I'm doing it right." The point was that one partner can't complain about the way the other partner loads the dishwasher, does the laundry, mows the lawn, etc, as long as they are getting it done.
THE VERY NEXT DAY James did a load of laundry. With a pen. Before I could even make a joke, he said, "I guess this is one of those times doing it isn't actually doing it right." Thankfully, there were only two garments ruined: the shirt whose pocket housed the pen and a dress of Ann's that was recently given to us by a friend.

Here were my saves:

I used this tutorial for turning James' shirt into a dress for Catherine. I didn't do the waist and I made the sleeves a bit longer than the tutorial. Cutting away shirt for the dress took out some of the ink stains. For the others, I cut out the stained fabric and placed the birds with a backing over the holes. My model wasn't super cooperative :)

Since my model wasn't very cooperative, here are some closer up.

This dress below was long sleeved. The ink was all over the sleeves and a bit on the pocket. I made it short sleeved first, but I did a very dumb thing and didn't cut off all the ink, it was just folded under the new hem on the shirt. So, the next time I washed it, it got on more of the garment.(grrrrr) So, on round two, I just made it sleeveless. There was a bit of the stain still on the pocket, so I just sewed something right over it. (hearts are easier than birds) In the top picture you can still see remnants of the stain on the pocket flap. If that doesn't come out with another round of stain remover....

 I'll just tuck it in like in this picture below. A girl of not-quite two isn't using her pockets anyway. :)