I recently heard that an erasable (by friction) gel pen made by Pilot and tagged as a "frixion ball" style is being used by quilters as a marking tool for fabric. The brief description I heard as to the merits of the pen is enticing, but I missed the details as to the effects of ironing, laundering and extreme temperatures when using this pen on fabric.

I would love to hear from anyone knowing about this pen.

These pens have been discussed on the QB. Type Frixion Pens into the search feature and read the threads that come up. I have used the pens and like them for small projects. The marks do reappear in cold temperatures until you wash out the ink. Will I mark an heirloom quilt with one? I'm not sure what the ink will do long term so, no I won't.

Frixion pens work GREAT!! You mark, you sew, then use your iron and the ink disappears........The ink will come back though if you put your quilt in something like a very cold freezer.....lolol.....I wanna say something like minus 14 degrees......But if that happens, all you do, is run the iron back over the marks, and POOF, it's gone.....

Welcome to the board from Southern California!!!
I have bought a couple but have not used them yet. I do wash all my quilts before they go out the door but am still leery of using them on really light colors.

I have been using them for a few weeks and love them. They seem to last for quite a long time. I have marked 4 quilts using just 1 pen and it's still going stronge. I also wash my quilts when finished.

I love these pens for marking light fabrics, but you should test them on medium and darker fabrics as when you iron the ink away, sometimes there is a white line left on some fabrics.

There was a thread here about how they washed and it still came back in the freezer. on the 3rd attempt they scrubbed the ink with stain remover and finally it didnt come back in the freezer. Would I use them? Nope. I like Dritz blue ink that is water soluable. They aslo have disappearing ink that I have used. I've used the blue dritz for my last two quilts with no problems. Mark as I come to that section, when done mist with water bottle, and it vanishes. As soon as the quilt is quilted I wash. After 2 weeks the ink is perm. so its best to mark as you go if you arent a marathon quilter.

Ditto...love, love, love them :thumbup:

Glad I read this, I just bought some and now cant wait to try them out! thanks

I went to Staples today in search of these Magic pens but they didn`t have them in our store. I did find a similar product Zwipes...don`t buy them, the color does not come out.

I had to chuckle about the marks reappearing in the cold. As some of you know, I live in Canada and we get
cold winter weather. There is nothing nicer than hanging you quilts out for an airing on a fresh cold morning and it would be a shocker to find all the quilting marks reappear without knowing about the pens. I think I will pass on these until they do some impovements on them. Thank you to those of you that took time to do several tests and found the ink to reappear when cold.