In my last apartment I used to iron on the floor because I couldn’t be bothered to get the ironing board out of our teeny closet and then have it take up half the living room.
After the first time I got a brown burn spot on the shirt I vowed to never iron again, and I blamed the iron for being British. A few weeks later I needed to iron, so I was really careful and I checked the iron to make sure no rust was going to come out like it did last time.
Immediate burn spot. Sweater ruined. I yelled.
Another no-ironing vow, but then I needed to iron again. Another burned shirt. WTF!
Then I moved to a new apartment, where I had one of those little baby ironing boards. “That’s not so bad,” I thought. It was easy to get out of the closet so I wouldn’t have any problems.
Only problem was, it smelled really strongly of curry and had gross stains on it, so I had to throw it away. Back to ironing on my carpet.
I ironed the first side with no problems. On the second swipe I noticed dark stuff all over the ruffles and I freaked out. This is my FAVORITE shirt. I love it.
“Wait a second … burns aren’t blue!” Then I looked at my carpet and felt sick with stupidity. After six months, two apartments and four burned shirts I finally figured out that it wasn’t the iron burning my shirts, it was the iron melting the carpet and then dragging the molten carpet onto my clothes.
- R.I.P Banana Republic frilly shirt?
In my defense, the previous carpet was brown, so perhaps you can see how I thought it was just a burn mark rather than carpet lava.
I’m also sad because that was one of the few shirts I own that didn’t come off a Goodwill rack or out of a sale bin. Not to make fun of Goodwill because I do love it, but it’s nice to be able to choose your clothes sometimes rather than waiting until someone else throws something away.
You could argue that I make fairly decent money at my job and I could just buy another shirt, but no. I can’t justify spending £50 on a shirt when I live in Europe and could buy a plane ticket to Italy for that price.
Besides, who is to say that if I did spend the money that I wouldn’t have another horrendous accident!
If you have any knowledge as to how I can preserve my beloved shirt, please tell me. I’ll take any suggestion into consideration. I’m willing to try anything to save this shirt.
Already I’ve had a suggestion to just use white out, and quite frankly I think it’s going to come down to that. If anyone notices I’ll just yell at them for trying to stare at my apples. Perverts.
lemony snippet 
Sounds like an ironing mistake I would make. Funny post. Great job!
Thanks!! At least I got a blog post out of it …
Ok, so you learned your lesson about ironing on carpet. Might I suggest that if you don’t want to take the time to take out an ironing board, you at least lay a very thick, folded (white, preferrably or at least a light color that has been washed several times) towel on your table or bed or even the floor first, and THEN put your shirt on that when ironing. I have done that in a pinch. Just be careful where you place the iron.
Also, do the same thing to remove the stain. Lay down the white towel, put your shirt face down on the side that has the stain. Then, re-iron on the back of the shirt and repeat as many times as you can without burning the shirt (let cool in between ironings) and some, most, or (hopefully) all of the blue should come off on the towel. Just remember to keep refolding the towel so the blue that does come off, doesn’t keep getting back on the shirt each time you re-iron. Does that make sense? Also, you can try to rub it with the towel right after you iron to rub some of the blue off. Heat put it on there and heat will help to take it back off. DON’T USE THE WHITE OUT! You will never be able to iron it again or maybe not even put it in the dryer if you do this.
It looks like it only got on the white part of the shirt. If that is the case, if you know how to sew (I know it’s a lot of work because it’s ruffled) you could replace the front trim and the ruffles. You could even buy some pre-ruffled trim at the fabric store and replace it.
Hope these ideas can help you if you haven’t already resorted to using the white out. (I really hope you didn’t do that.) Good luck.
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