Thursday was the UK general election and I was helping run a committee room all day. The weather was sunny so I thought that during the early part of the day I could get some of my fabric stash washed and dried in between feeding people and data entry. Lack of drying time and space is the thing that causes me most problems with new fabric as I don’t have a tumble dryer.

So I got the pale peach coloured cotton fashion fabric and china silk lining for my next project, threw them in the washing machine without looking very carefully, and left them. Bad move, because a biro had made its way into the machine too.

This is the fashion fabric; the lining isn’t as bad. I think I still might just be able to make the dress as the stains are only in one corner but it’s going to be very tight – the fabric is narrower than I remember and so I probably only just had enough length even before I stained it. It’s going to be a second version of this BurdaStyle pattern

which I love and is probably the best fitting thing I’ve made so far. It’s style 119 from the October 2009 magazine. My pattern review is here (may only work for members of Pattern Review).

Undaunted, I threw the remains of the biro away, pulled two other pieces of unwashed fabric out of the stash, and put them in the machine.

And when I took them out I found the other half of the biro. Luckily most of the ink in it had already gone onto the first two fabrics, or perhaps because I washed these on a less gentle cycle it washed away. I can’t see any obvious stains on them.

I haven’t got anything definitely lined up for these two yet. I am thinking the hexagon print might work with this vintage pattern I bought from ZipZapKap, probably with black bands.

I bought the red and white swirl fabric intending to make a fourth version of McCalls 5799

which is a great simple pattern that lends itself to a variety of things, but now I’m thinking I want something more adventurous, just not certain what yet. Years ago I had a Vivienne Westwood wrap dress in a black and white swirly print that I wore until it was almost a rag. It had a curved hem and a collar unlike the McCalls one above.

Time to go and iron the peach cotton and see if I can squeeze the Burda dress onto it. Fingers crossed.

And if you’re interested, we got the right result in our constituency at the election so it wasn’t all bad!