Erase Cleanly

 

I'm at the point in my Garment Sewing Academy blouse construction where I need to transfer the pattern markings to the fabric. One of the marking tools they suggested are FriXion pens. Instead of digging out my transfer paper and tracing wheel, I nabbed a package of them when I was at Target the other day. In this first picture I've used a yellow and made an X on the lower right side of the fabric. To my eye, it looks a bit orange. And on the upper left I've used a green pen to make an X. 

I tested the pens out on paper first, you can definitely erase the mark on paper with just the friction of the soft plastic end of the pen. That's why they're called FriXion, because it's a heat-sensitive ink, and of course: friction=heat. Apparently though, if you leave your journal or whatever in a hot car, your writing or drawing will disappear. So, I won't be using these for anything I want to be at all permanent.

So, erasing the marks on fabric with the eraser does not work. Butt hit it with the iron for a bit, and blame the marks are gone gone gone. Are they gone forever though? 

Apparently the marks return if the item you've marked either gets a whole lot hotter than the iron OR if they get really cold. Interesting, huh? I haven't tested either of those propositions out yet. 

Honestly, I think I'm a little hesitant to trust these because of the quilt marking pens back in the 90's that were sold as disappearing, but then would sometimes come back after washing or ironing or make strange yellow-y brown marks. Which would be a total tragedy in the middle of a quilt, right? After all that work, yikes! I think on this kind of busy fabric for this blouse, I'll give it a go, using one of the colors that would blend in if the marks decide to reappear.. But if it was a solid color, or especially a solid quilt, I wouldn't be able to let myself use them yet. Guess, I'm a cautious or laggard adopter instead of an early adopter this one time.

Pre-Print Work

Time for some mark-making before I start doing some Gelli Plate printing. I measured my Gelli Plate and cut pieces of freezer paper to size and ironed it to some of my hand-dyed fabric. 

I recently bought some new-to-me media, Faber-Castell Gelatos, which are pigment/wax/oil crayons and Edding textile markers, which are wash-resistant water-based ink.

I was very pleased with the transparent look of the Gelatos on the fabric. I smeared it around with the sponge included with it. Like a makeup sponge but much more firm.

This was very fun and hard to stop myself from covering the entire surface. I wanted to leave room for what I'll be printing over the top. It's All About The Layers.

I think these pieces of fabric are going to be even more interesting to work with when I'm printing instead of using plain white or solid color fabric.