White Clover Marking Pen: leaves very fine white lines that appear after a moment; supposed to come out with heat from the iron; some quilters swear by this but I must say that it did not work for me - the lines do not come out completely with the iron which is ok if you definitely stitch on your lines as it will not be visible once you stitch over them. Useless to me as I often do not stitch directly on my lines or change my mind about something I have drawn - and in general I am a very messy marker, so this one is definitely out for me.
Violet Air Erasable Marker: use that all the time to put in temporary lines, i.e. when sewing binding together or quickly marking a motif in a square. No rinsing, no iron, lines just disappear by themselves.
Sewline Ceramic Marker (white): also use this extensively for drawing some lines or markers on darker fabric, however the lines are very fine and I do not find it suitable to mark out an entire wholecloth for example - not smooth enough and I do have problems at times to get the white marks out.
Blue Water Erasable Markers: Everybody's go to, I think, for light fabric. Have been using them for a very long time and use them to mark my wholecloth quilts. Never had an issue with them, however you do need to make sure that you do rinse them out completely as they can leave brown marks after a while. As I wash my wholecloth quilts once finished, this has never occurred in any of my quilts.
Water Soluable White Pencil (Clover): No idea what this is and where I got it from; inspecting it more closely it does not actually say what it is. It just says that the lines disappear with water (which they do) and that it is made with white colouring. Was not game enough to use this on my purple Ruler Practice quilt.
Bohin Chalk Marker: Finally got one of those - a simple chalk marking pen. Did my centre line on my purple Ruler Practice quilt with that. Like it - nice strong lines, except that the pen dulls relatively quickly, so if you want fine lines you need to sharpen it continuously.
Roxanne's Quilter's Choice White Marking Pencil: A chalk pencil that comes in a pack of four (2 white, 2 grey), relatively inexpensive. Read about it on The Quilter's Review recently and then came about it by chance in one of the online shops over here. Marked my border with this, as I had tested it and it appeared to stay on and was able to be erased with water.
Here is my border, all marked out with this pencil
Removing the marks with water after I stitched down the frame
Karin
Thank you so much for this information. I always fear marking my quilts. I had a problem with the Sewline pencil - could not get the lines out and the lead transferred to the King Tut thread I was quilting with. So as I tried to erase the lines I wore my thread down. I had washed the quilt to get the lines out and that didn't work either. But after repeat washings they faded some. I really appreciate your list of products. Some new things to try.
ReplyDeleteLet me say that I highly recommend another product: Crayola Ultra Washable markers. Yes, the kid's product. My grandson has heavily marked his white PJs (that I made) with all of the colors, even black. They wash out COMPLETELY. I will be using those. I have had problems with the blue chalk roller wheel marker from Clover. That blue did not want to come out of my white quilt and I was NOT a happy camper. Yellow has also been an issue too.
ReplyDeletefrom where i can buy these pencils. Also please recommend the best sewing machine for quilting under 500. I am new to sewing & don't know much about it.
ReplyDelete