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Pens for Friendship Quilt


barbm

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My SIL is making a photo quilt for her parents' 50th anniversary. I will quilt it before she takes it to a family gathering in May, where she plans on having family members write personal notes on the muslin backing. Question here is: what pens should she get? Will she need to heat set those pens? If so, how do we go about that with an already quilted quilt? The batting will be Hobbs 80/20.

Any suggestions from the experts out there?

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Barb

I have made lots of these quilts to be signed and when I give the quilt I usually give the pigma pens to go with it. tie a ribbon and pin to the quilt so they know to only use these pens. They should be heat set once the signatures are all finished, and definately before washing. It is not a problem to write on it once it is quilted. Just have them place it on a hard surface. Works great!

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Barb, I too have used the Pigma pens with good success for writing on quilts after they were quilted. I would suggest a #3 or #5 tip to make it easier to write smoothly. The fine tip #1 tends to drag and catch more on the fabric when there is batting and backing underneath your surface. I've also used the fabric pens which work well too, especially if you have smaller children or people who like to draw instead of write words.

;)

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Barb - I just did a signature quilt and the Pigma Pens by Micron worked really well for us. I would recommend that you use the #8 point which is .50 - it is the largest point.

The finer points are hard to use, especially for folks not acquainted with writing on fabric. It is easy to puncture the fabric with the fine points plus they tend to catch on the fabric.

The #8 alleviates that.

And I'm sure that you are probably going to use cotton batt since it will be touched by an iron. I was just in a class with a lady who used Rainbows to make a purse and of course, she had to press it to make the necessary creases. She was surprised and so was I, that the Rainbows thread melted away.

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It might be obvious to some but..... put something about not writing out to the very edge. My best friend had the idea to have everyone at her daughter's wedding sign a block, many, many were almost unusable, writing all the way to the edge. It took very creative sewing to get them to show on the finished quilt (we fused some to a larger block, and recut) not the best way to go. Another friend cut the middle out of sticky name tag stickers, stuck them on the fabric, then they were signed in the middle, she removed the sticky, and voila... perfect sewing seams!

Pat

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