Writing On Fabric

I love to put words on my quilts and creations. .  I use it as another layer of meaning and design to whatever I am working on.  To put the words on fabric,  I use anything that I can get my hands on  - anything that I can use to spell.  It can be wooden or metal letters, beads, stamps or writing implements.  I am working on a special piece now that I call "Freedom".  My goal was to write my thoughts about freedom on a rectangle using some type of pen or marker. 

My friend Kelly of http://www.pinkadotquilts.blogspot.com/  tells me over and over to share my oops as well as my successes.  She tells me that people will learn from my mistakes.  I learn from my mistakes, so I guess she could be right.  So I will share what I have learned from trying to put these thoughts on fabric.  This is the fabric I planned on using.

These are some of the writing implements I thought I could use.  As long as it won't run or wash out, I will use it. 

The first thing I did was draw lines with a black marker on the paper side of freezer paper.

Then I ironed the waxy side to the back of the fabric.  This is to stabilize the fabric for writing.  For the best adhesion, I recommend that you iron both sides with a hot dry iron.

Then using a light box or daylight window, I could see my lines to write.  If you don't care about the straightness of your words, you don't need the marked line, but you still need the freezer paper.

So I started testing my pens.  I thought I would like a metallic gold.  No.  Black? No.  Green?  No.  Thinner black?  No.  Brown?  No.  I tried so many different thicknesses and colors.  Either I couldn't discern the words or they were too much like blobs or they were too obvious and in your face.  I didn't like anything.

  I finally realized that it wasn't the pens and the colors.....it was the fabric.    Even though I looked at the fabric as a tone on tone, it was just too busy with too much contrast.  I switched to a less busy fabric and I found a pen to work.  It was a good balance.