New Marking tool

A couple of Saturdays ago I attended

"Black Bag Saturday"

at 35th Avenue Sew n Vac

and received this pen in my bag.

They simply told me it was a gel pen.

So I used it like a regular pen....

UNTIL

I saw in Cozy Quilt shop newsletter that this Frixion pen

is used for quilt marking.

The pen writes on fabric and is erasable by rubbing or ironing.

I was so excited  I decided to do a little test.

I wrote on the selvage of this VIP fabric.

I tried rubbing it out with the eraser,

but that didn't seem to work very well

Ironing, on the other hand,

worked like a charm!

So COOL!

I was very excited!

Before I wrote this up I decided to have a little google look

to see what others may be saying about his Frixion Gel pen

and this is what I found:

The Quilting Board is a quilter's message board

and there was a big warning about the Frixion pen.

It seems that the markings of the pen, which comes in various colors,

seems to come back when exposed to freezing temperatures.

Hummm.

So I decided to do a further test. 

Got the fabric scrap back out that I did the original test

on and made some more marks, ironed it off and then put it

in the refrigerator.

No marks.

Transfered it to the freezer

and the marks did indeed come back.

Now I don't know about you, but I don't put too many

quilts in the freezer........

I live in Arizona and I don't use my quilts in freezing temperatures.

So I'm not sure that I would worry about the marks coming

back on a quilt.

However, it makes me wonder under what other circumstances

the marks may come back.

A cool water wash perhaps?

So back to some google searching....

The Quilting Climber did a wash test on a

quilted sampler divided into 3 secions.

One untreated, one starched before writing and one starched after writing.

Have a look at her results here.

Looks like some more testing may be required before

I'll actually use this pen on a quilt top.

Mia thinks I should do more testing as well.

Quilty blessings,

tammy