i have a clover pencil sharpener that i bought from sue nichols that works wonderful. it is cute looks like a thimble.

I use taylors chalk, inexpensive and comes in many colors, also soap shivers are great for dark colors.

I also like Sewline and love them. I use the charcoal color and the white.

I have tryed every pen on the market and nothing works, until I found a pen called Frixion make by Pilot. Come out with heat, just run a warm iorn over it, comes out every time. You can get it a Walgreens or Computers stores.

Oops, I mean Iron, sorry...

General chalk pencils, from an art supply store, my quilting teacher says these are the best pencils to use for quilting as she has tried all the quilting related supplies, and prefers these and they have a lot of different colors fro marking

I just finished hand quilting a quilt for my daughter. I started quilting it about 4 years ago. I am not a fast quilter. I used the blue marking pen and the marks were there for about 3-4 years.
When I finished quilting I held my breath and started spraying with plain water.....and the marks all came out. What a relief!!!
Every time I stopped quilting I folded the quilt up with the top on the inside so there was no light getting to the markings. I don't know if this helped, but the water soluble pens do work.

With a hand held sharpener, turn the sharpener, not the pencil. Since I started doing this I rarely break the lead, unless the pencil has fallen on a hard floor - when that happens, the lead in the pencil can break.

I use Prismacolor artists colored pencils, in white and light blue. I stay away from yellow, red and other colors because they contain dyes that might stain the fabric. I also use a marker from Bohin that's similar to the Sewline, but I only have the white leads for it, and for fabrics that are dark enough, I like the Clover white pen. It irons off.

Janet

I have found the cheapest Bic pencils works great and they do wash out....gives a very fine line....works best on light fabrics...

I use the Fons and Porter lead (black and white) but the actual mechanical pen that they sell is expensive, so I bought a cheap mechanical pen set and use the F&P lead in it.One white and one black. Works great! Just make sure you get the right size pen for the lead.