Win Some, Lose Some

Well, I had an interesting two weeks. I have been working steadily away on my 'formal' table runner. It took ages to do the grid on there and I decided to take out the markings closer to the end as I found the blue lines were starting to be very distracting in terms of deciding whether to fill more or leave it.

It looked great so far. So I took the markings out by rinsing it in cold water as I always do. This time though I noticed that I had some brownish lines left, particularly on the center lines 😒. What happened?

This has never happened to me before in all the years of quilting using the blue water erasable markers. Tried to get this out with a bit of stain remover soap...bad mistake, as it also whitened the fabric a touch.

Can you believe it? I tried to think whether I did anything differently this time, but can't really come up with anything. I washed my fabric before quilting as I always do, I used the same old markers...too weird. The only thing I could come up with was that I usually go through my draws and get a handful of markers out and then see which one has the most colour left rather than take a brand-new marker out of a packet. I remember I did mark the center lines in parts with one of the older markers which also happened to be a different brand. As it turned out too weak I then used my normal, newer marker to finish off the lines. Could it be that these markers have a shelf life and somehow chemically change after a while? I certainly have heard people talking about having brown lines left but this was usually in the context of having left the marker on the fabric for some time. This certainly was not the case for my project. The marking and quilting happened in the last two weeks.

Well, so it is spoilt...I was going to sell it but this is obviously not going to happen now. On the positive side, it freed me up to start the next table runner as I am not going to fill in any other areas on this one now. Bit of a pity but what can you do. Just glad that I did not start my larger wholecloth and have this happen...that would have been terrible and I would have been beside myself. Definitely will buy all new markers when I am ready to quilt that one! 

My new table runner should be interesting...less formal with a lot of fun elements which does not require any tracing.

Something similar to this...again, designed in Affinity Designer 2 this should be a bit more versatile than my 'formal' table runner was and should be a lot more fun to do. Thinking of quilting this out on a grey fabric with a light-green thread. 

Never boring over here!

Karin