This week I have had terrible luck washing fabric. I always always always pre-wash and dry my fabrics so that there is never any shrinking when the finished product is washed. In all the hundreds of yards of fabric that I've successfully laundered, this week I ruined TWO loads of brand new fabric. That's a total of 8 yards of premium quilting cotton. At $8-10/yard, it's been a painful week opening my washing machine.

The culprits? Two new-to-me fabrics I wanted to try working with, both that came in a solid color. One is an interlock knit to try my hand at making a long sleeved tee shirt, the other a cotton voile that was going to be a Thanksgiving dress (but the fabric wasn't delivered until the day AFTER Thanksgiving...Fabric.com is soooooo slow delivering orders!).

After the first debaucle, I (thought I) wised up and put a color catcher sheet into the mix. The knit was just too much even for the dye-absorbing sheet.

What's the take home message in all of this? Be careful with dark solid-colored fabric! Even washing on cold will cause some of them to bleed dye, so wash them only with other dark fabrics. I'm off to the fabric store so that our Christmas tree can have a skirt...

BTW, tree sap gone unnoticed on fabric that is then stored in a bin in the basement for a year means complete destruction for a Christmas tree skirt.