Hi, everyone - sorry not to have been here, but I have been broadband challenged since last week, and tearing my hair out in frustration. the engineer has been, and all is well so far, so I am trying to catch up now. So I am sorry I wasn't here to answer questions or to say welcome to the newbies who have said you will join us.
I have no problem appliqueing batiks at all, I find them very easy to work with, and the tighter weave is particularly good if you have to snip into corners etc., as they don't fray so easily as regular fabrics. Having said that, I do use regular fabrics too, if I don't have a batik that will 'fit' with what I am trying to achieve.
I am marking my black fabric with a Sewline rectractible pencil and a yellow (I also have white) 'lead' in it. I am lucky that I have two of these because I bought one and then promptly lost it, so bought a second. I now keep one with a grey 'lead' and the other with one of the lighter 'leads' in them. I believe now that they do one pencil that has three colours built into it. If you do decide to buy one, please consider getting the eraser too - it works very well with the pencil lines in any of the colours, and is also pencil shaped, with a retractible eraser that I think can also be replaced.
With handling the blocks quite a bit I have redrawn over the lines occasionally, just for extra clarity, but it works well for me.