Another scrap so soon? I’m trying to stick to posting these on Mondays in future, so this week begins as I mean to go on.

Here’s is an object lesson in how to shrink a garment before upcycling. Or possibly how not to shrink a garment before upcycling. Let’s just say I was a little vigorous in my approach.

Originally a long 100% lambswool Dorothy Perkins skirt from my local charity shop, this item was bought purely for the pleasure of shrinking to make into something else. I had absolutely no intention of wearing it, and – knowing what wool skirts do to the average backside – I really didn’t think anyone else should be wearing it either. So that’s my excuse for indulging in a little garment genocide. Here it is before I got to work with my evil plan.

Innocent skirt, minding its own business

And here’s a closer shot of its rather nice back-to-front texture (the right side of the garment looked like the wrong side, if you get me).

Nice texture

And this is what happened when I put it through a hot wash in my unopenable-during-its-wash-cycle front-loading washing machine.

Oh, the horror!

Yes, a little more shrinkage than I’d anticipated; about a third of it just disappeared. Nevermind. Let that be a lesson to you. On the plus side, I have a reasonably big piece of very dense felt to play with.

This textile vandalism happened a while ago but I dug it out when I was looking for something to use for Mimi Kirchner‘s wonderful Fresh Fish pattern. I’m not sure it’s what I’ll use for my first effort, but it’s there in my fish pending tray for now. It’s certainly big enough to make up the body of the fish.  By the way, I’d been toying with getting hold of Mimi’s fish pattern for months and was finally inspired to reel it in by this adorable version made by the reigning queen of garment-felting, Betz White.