Adventures in Sewing and a Cheap, Green Stain Remover

In my , I wrote about "getting back to basics" and how I was "darning" my husband's socks, instead of just throwing them out.  

How far are you willing to go to "save" a pair of jeans? Well, one of my "failures" in life is my ability to iron....I don't do it well, but well enough to get by.  

I call it a failure more because I just can't make things look like my mom did when she would iron....Plus last weekend I ironed on a patch over the knee of my son's jeans. He was so proud of that patch, showed everyone the cool race car on his knee.  Well then laundry day came and went and the darned patch peeled off a bit....oops! I remember reading on the back of the package this patch came in that you can make it more "permanent" if you sew it on....I didn't want to do that! Call it lazy, or optimistic that the iron on would keep, but I didn't feel like pulling out my sewing stuff.  

So, I pulled out my sewing stuff....LOL. I suppose I could have tried ironing it on again, but seriously, why go through that again. I guess I could have given up too, but if any of you have kids, let alone boys, you know how quickly those knees get worn out in their pants! His jeans were still fitting well and looked almost brand new....I just couldn't let myself throw them out. Not sure my sewing job will hold up through the laundry, but I gave it one last college try and it looks pretty darn good. I must add that trying to figure out how to sew this patch on was interesting because I almost sewed the leg of the pants shut! 

While all this sewing was going on, the laundry was washing and I've stumbled upon, thank you to Pinterest.com, a "recipe" for a homemade miracle cleaner. My luck with a lot of commercial brand stain removers hasn't really removed a lot of stains that have made their way into my laundry basket, so I thought I would try this. The original post is on http://moderndaymoms.com/homemade-miracle-cleaner/ and I really had to share! These are items commonly found at home, so technically I got to make this "miracle" cleaner for pennies on the dollar. I did not use the "orignal blue dawn" as indicated as I didn't have any, but I used the apple scented "dawn". I sprayed all the nasty spots on my daughters clothes and rubbed the spray in with a brush. When I took them out of the washer to put in the dryer, all but one stain came out! Not to sure what she got on her shirt but it already went through the washer and dryer last week, so the stain was more "set in". I should have taken pictures to show you, but totally forgot as I was trying to get back to my sewing. Not sure I'm going to call this a miracle, but it definitely got those stains out! Yippee!

Well that's it for my laundry excitement! If anyone has any other laundry ideas that are green and cheap, I'd love to hear them!