I hate the pens sold specifically for quilting. They're hugely overpriced, the purple one comes out in about twenty minutes on a humid day, the blue one doesn't show up on that many colours and may also come out if it's humid, or from the handling involved in hand-quilting, and both are permanently fixed if you happen to iron over them. Chalk-based pencils are a pain in the neck, as they mark poorly, don't give that accurate a line, smudge off quickly, and the pencil goes blunt at incredible speed and is used up in no time at all. It can be handy for roughing out a design, but it's not what I use for the final markings. So I'm experimenting with the washable markers aimed at children as well.
So far I've done one quilt and lots of test scraps. This is how I do the test scraps. I take each pen and draw a line with it, going over the line twenty times with the same pen. Then I put an iron over it and press a fair bit. Then I throw it into the washing machine on a 40 degree wash. I also do the same test and put it into a mug of warm water instead of the washing machine. With the Crayola washable markers, everything has come out with the washing machine test, and it has come out with the mug test after a bit of shoogling it about. I seem to recall that the grey makes a fairly decent line, but washes out quicker than anything else. I'm going on the basis that if it can take that amount of ink and pressing, and come out in just a mug test, then it should be able to stand up to the type of usage it gets with quilting. The main factors that are different with quilting are time - a quilt usually takes me a few months - and oils from my hands. Still, it worked fine when I made up a baby quilt using these markers.
I've also been using some washable Crayola pens which are a finer line, called Draw-Write pens, and come in a pack of black, blue and red. Once I found them, I pretty much stuck to them, and the black is the main one I used for that baby quilt. I'm about to use the red for another quilt. I haven't been using the pens long enough to know whether they reappear years later, but they seem to have washed out beautifully, and I imagine the big companies would be in trouble if their washable pens didn't actually wash out as claimed, they would have hordes of angry parents complaining about ruined clothing. It might be worth steering clear of the small companies to be on the safe side.
I'm eyeing up other brands, since there are plenty out there making washable pens aimed at children. Berol, for instance, do this range which I'd be interested in trying:
http://www.berol.co.uk/cdetail.php?c...17&Cat=&crumb=. You can get all these pens much more cheaply on eBay, sometimes broken down into more reasonable packs such as 6 of a colour instead of 12. Has anyone used the Berol ones?
What I really want is a pen that will reliably stand up to being ironed without being set permanently, and that will stay put in the fabric until it is washed out. I haven't dared iron over any of these pens when they're on the quilts, just in samples. The thing is, I'd far prefer to be able to mark up a quilt top prior to basting, and by the time it's been marked up, it's usually acquired a good few creases and wrinkles, especially if it's too big to store flat. Marking up a basted quilt is such a nuisance. Has anyone had experience of ironing/pressing over these lines and still having them wash out safely? It's the kind of thing the manufacturers are clueless about, as they're not catering to the quilting market. Indeed, the woman I spoke to at Berol kept on trying to point me at their textiles branch, even though it had absolutely nothing that did the job I wanted while the washable pens did exactly what I wanted: she just didn't know what all of this is about.