I have small, dwindling collection of T-shirts. A few concert T’s, like the Eagles (2nd Reunion Tour, 2 US dates). A couple of motorcycle shop t-shirts that are, to me, priceless. Then the endless parade of Hawaiian shirts I own.
Some are very nice, some are tasteful, some are cheesy, and at least two or three, I wear because they are, to me, disposable. The shirts were cheap at the time, and the colors are either faded, or some kind of unnatural dye that never fades. Like cockroaches, that dye will escape even a nuclear holocaust.
One batch of the shirts is missing buttons, but I rarely wear them buttoned up, leastways, not all the way.
I was reminiscing about a girl in Austin who said she always saw me with a half-buttoned shirt. In part, because that was what I pulled on before I entered her store. She was bemoaning the passing of “old Austin,” but Old Austin is still alive, at least, in spirit.
One of my father’s favorite charities was The Shakespeare Festival of Dallas, responsible for the Dallas “Shakespeare in the Park,” every summer.
At his passing, what it became clear that he bought a souvenir T-shirt for every season for the last 20+ years, a Dallas Shakespeare in the Park T-shirt, for each show, or each season, depending on how they did it.
Over the years, I collected few. Not too many, and one of my favorite T-shirts is still an opera one, from Seattle’s “Ring Cycle,” a gothic lettered, “Gotterdamrung.” I call it my “heavy metal” shirt.
Twilight of the gods? Never mind.
So those old Shakespeare T-shirts have been re-purposed. They are now a quilt, made from the best of the T-Shirts.
I still have a cardboard box, in closet, with the motorcycle t-shirts. A few are left. Not much else. Material I couldn’t bear (bare) to part with, since there is still much sentiment attached. Eventually, though, as my Hawaiian shirts die off, one was ripped, another is plainly too small now, one with no buttons, gradually, these are being collected to make a quilt.
There are several services, I don’t recall which one, but there are several ways to turn old T-shirts, old Hawaiian shirts and so forth, into quilts. Suitable for covering up when curled up with a good book on a winter’s eve, or, more likely, a nice wall-hanging.