In which I abuse gortex

before...

 Being the somewhat less than ladylike girl that I am, and knowing that I am often hard on my clothes and that the color representation of most monitors is actually quite inaccurate I ordered myself some gortex samples so that I could perform a few experiments.

Of the colors I ordered, the only one I really liked in person was the blue, so it receive the lion's share of my attention. (The hounds-tooth is disappointingly moldy colored)

after.  the marks are ground in dirt.

Now, I don't know about you -- but when confronted, well anything really, I will usually end up trying to sit on it.   Philly in particular is chock full of waist high brick walls with concrete caps, which are quite handy when waiting for buses, but do mean I scootch my butt on rather rough surfaces.   Thus, I decided, I needed to see if the gortex could handle it -- so I ground it into the concrete as hard as I could.

My methods were described as 'rubbing with extreme prejudice'  but I wanted to get a good sense of just what it would handle .

checking for waterprooficity

Anyhow, I washed the dirt off, let it dry and it looked good as new.   Then I put more water on it, let it sit.  It pooled in the areas I'd scratched, but when I checked the back, it didn't make it though and everything was still bone dry.

lovely and dry!

So, me thinks I shall end up with the lovely blue gortex.   (And I seem to have done an unintentional commercial for the supplier as I kept the tags on... well, now you can get some too.)

I want to do a full muslin of the pattern with everything as it will be to figure out exactly what yardage I'm going to need, then I'm going to take the plunge and order the material.   Think happy waterproof thoughts :)