So this was going to be the post from earlier today

Hello, everyone.

I had planned to do a post about laundry results on book cover fabrics. Unfortunately the camera chip was at the other end of the house, and it was late. So this is that post instead.

The 4 inch square of handkerchief linen shrank to just about 3 7/8 inches as y'all may remember.

It was going to be necessary to do a wash and dry cycle of the remainder of the piece of linen, just to get it ready to work with. And also to see what happened with color. I tucked the half yard of red Kona cotton muslin that was intended for an underlining to the linen, and a bunch of colored clothing that needed to be washed, into the machine on cool cycle. Ran the whole load through the dryer on "knits" which is a more-gentle heat setting.

Then laid the washed and dried--but not yet ironed--fabrics out on a chair to look at.

Left to right: Kona cotton, red handkerchief linen, red poly lining fabric

 As y'all can see, the linen went from tomato-colored to cream-of-tomato-soup-colored. The Kona held its color.

I am faced with a decision: try the linen color against the actual book color (if it matches we wink at the almost-orange shade?) or switch to using the Kona for face fabric. Or possibly another red fabric. I have tried one of the local fabric shops. I may try the other one...but IIRC they mostly focus on the really fancy stuff for formal wear.

I think I'll do a little more test stitching on the poly doupioni before giving up. The French knots came out pretty and were easy to do in a line. Actually looked better than the outline stitching did. Not as hard to go around curves, either.