trekked around all our local charity shops today. we're blessed with a whole streetfull, a bonus addition to the streetfull of fabric shops on the other side, if only they weren't mostly home dec, though there's a handful of sari shops to make up for it. found plenty of woolly jumpers for fulling, but nothing suitable for the bag project (was hoping to find a wool blanket or similar, don't think i'll get enough from a jumper). in the very last shop i spotted my perfect bag fabric, a rather lurid pink/purple/green 70's flowered curtain fabric. my immediate thought was to find a purple lining and lo and behold there was a piece of decent quality purple lining hanging on the rail above. the main fabric is loosely woven, fairly thin (thin enough to need a pale coloured felt underneath) and stiff but seems to have softened up slightly after a soak. i've stuck a swatch in the wash to see how it copes. the burn test suggests acrylic with melting, acrid black smoke and a sputtering flame.

the fabrics were £3 the lot which made up for the extortionate price of the jumpers. couldn't find anything decent for under £3, so the fulling (was hoping to do a blanket) is definitely not going to be the cheapo thrill i was expecting. glad i bought a plunger for the bathtub method as my machine's a front loader which can't be checked and stopped through the process and there's no chance i'm leaving my expensive jumpers' fate in the hands of the washing machine gods. i'm itching to have a try but i've got a meeting tonight and my coding to do later in the week so won't be able to start till next week :(