Thursday 17 March 2011

Will it all come out in the wash?

That's the thought that the awesome Janet of Quiltsalot planted in my tiny mind when she commented on my last post.  She was referring to Frixion pens.    

When I woke this morning there was only one thought on my mind.  I must conduct a scientific test.   If you can call this scientific that is......


Look.... you can see a bit of me in the steel bowl!   That's the closest I've come to having my photo taken in years.

Back to the test.   First off I did this.....


.... on a piece of white cotton I drew a squiggly line of each of the 7 colours of Frixion pens I had to hand.  Couldn't find the purple pen it's gone a.w.o.l in the mess in here. 

Then......

I ironed away half of each of the squiggles.   Thought this might test if ironing would somehow 'fix' the ink into the fabric.

Next... I hand washed the fabric in warm water using a mild liquid detergent for delicate fabrics.  All of the ink came easily out of the fabric with minimal washing.  So far so good.

I let the fabric dry naturally at room temperature.  No sign of the the squiggles at this point.  To be thorough I popped the fabric into the freezer to see if the colour would reappear in low temperatures.

This is the result.....


The only colour to reappear was Red.    The mark is very faint but it is there.   Maybe a bit of gentle rub-a-dubbing would do the trick if using this colour.

What do I think?   I think that doing a quick wash test on your chosen fabric before you use a Frixion pen on a project is probably a good idea.    Better to be safe than sorry.

Heck.... all this seriousness is giving me a headache.  It's just not natural. 

I'm off to put an ice pack on my bonce before I have a brain melt.

Till next time.....

Josie  X

2 comments:

Pootle said...

Ha Ha. This post really made me giggle. x

Q said...

what's a bonce josie? I know I could just google it, but I'm asking anyway... I don't think I will ever put my quilt (or myself into freezing temperatures, unless I decide to move to your place) but I do (honest!) appreciate the test as I was quite curious myself.
I used a pigma 0.5 brownish colour on white homespun to trace my stitchery for the pouchy thing, I think I can see the lines but my sister in law says I am loopy (well I am loopy... but still) and also I have this wobbly hands issue so afraid of my straight lines looking like lines on a cardiogram or something ;)