What to do with shirts? Bibs? Medals?

Racing is fun, but over time you accumulate a LOT of shirts, bibs and medals.  

Medals are fairly easy--you can buy a wood plaque at any craft store, paint it to your liking, and screw some of these hooks into the board.  This is what my display board looks like!  

My medal rack.
I think I need an upgrade already!

I painted the whole board with white acrylic paint, then the trim in purple.  Once the paint dried I chose to just put "Running" at the top.  I printed out the word in several large sizes to see how it would fit best on the board.  Then I used a pointed tip pen and outlined the letters by pressing into the paper and wood hard enough to leave an indentation in the wood.  Then, you simply paint inside the indentations!  (Yes, it does require a little bit of a steady hand.  But it's worth it!)  If you're short on time or uncomfortable painting, you can also use vinyl lettering or stencils found at any craft store.  I plan on making a tutorial for my transfer method soon with the gift giving holidays coming soon, the plaque makes a great gift for any runner! And I have a few runners in my life who could use one of these. (We can always use more options for displaying medals.)

If you aren't interested in having your medals hanging around, consider donating them to an organization like medals 4 mettle! (The medals are given to encourage people with handicaps or fighting serious diseases.)

Bibs are also easy.  I keep all of mine in a binder using page protectors and have written the finishing time and average pace on each one.  However for display purposes, I plan on making a plaque for them soon along with a new rack for my medals.  (Tutorial to follow later!)

You can also do something similar to what I did for my medals, but it can be tricky because bibs can come in a lot of sizes so the screw hook placement can be a little iffy.  There is also a company called Mile 22 that can make tote bags out of your old bibs!  A company called Spoonflower also has a tutorial on how to make your bibs into fabric.  (It requires scanning them, so you still have them intact but also have a great medium to work with too!)  Just be aware that it can be time intensive and get a little pricey since it's custom made fabric.

Shirts are a little more difficult to work with, because of the different fabrics.  A stack of cotton tee shirts (not technical tees) can easily be made into a quilt.  A produce bag or a tote bag!  Just be aware that technical tees though are a little more difficult to work with, because of the slickness of the fabric itself.  But you can use little tricks like putting a sheet of paper on top and bottom of the fabric while you're sewing.  This helps the feet of your sewing machine get just enough traction to be able to feed the fabric through.  When you're done you can just pull the paper off the fabric (or cut very carefully along the seams) and you're done!

How do you display your race swag?