Quilt Experiment with Cricut Maker and Washable Fabric Pen and Fabric Color Fastness

 Making Carolina Moore (CraftMoore)'s Cricut Maker Block of the Week, the Sequel  was a terrific opportunity to test a number of different aspects of quilt making to expand my skills:

1. Simulate blocks in EQ8 to pick fabric and placement
2. Cutting fabric with the Cricut Maker
3. Marking fabric with the Cricut Washable Fabric Pen
4. Test effectiveness of 'Sew Clean' (discontinued product) to remove markings
5. Design quilting for different blocks in the same quilt
6. Test using soap to remove markings along with #6
7. Test soaking quilt to remove any extra dye from fabric (not pre-washed) using Vicki Welsh's Save My Bleeding Quilt instructions

What happened?

Pattern preparation and EQ8 simulation:

Taking Carolina's image:

Into EQ8 (Electric Quilt v8):

Loved the fabrics in the Riley Blake Designs line by Keera Job is called In the Meadow. The white with blue bees was too much, so plain White and backing are from stash. Here is a picture of the the two fabric sets options:

Into an organized design for the cutting files from my fabrics:

Fabric preparation:

Followed Carolina's instructions as well as other YouTubes on cutting fabric and using the washable fabric pen. This quilt project had the cutting files to cut all blocks and borders by color to only lay out each fabric once. (Later I expect to do the original BOTW pattern at some point in the future where the blocks pieces are cut individually.) Time to lay all the pieces out:

The bleed-through on that white fabric was just so much that I didn't want to leave it for after. Quilters Apothecary says that you should NOT press any Washable Fabric Marking pens or they will become permanent.

I bought Sew Clean on 22-April 2019 plus the 'oiler' from Quilters Apothecary, but it's been discontinued, such a shame!

First and second Sew Clean applications, not enough gone:

Fifth and Sixth applications are finally removing most of the dye:

After 5-6 applications and a cold water bath the white is finally okay to move forward and sew the blocks:

Fabric Preparation Lessons Learned:

• Leave slightest bit of adhesive showing on the loading end of the mat to keep the fabric from rolling up and shifting (had to recut the 4 green background blocks of the plus block background)
• For white fabric turn off the marking pen, it bleeds through, which is okay for the marking, but not the numbers.
• Remember the blue washable marking pens turn permanent with heat according to quilters apothecary, use a manual rolling presser instead of heat
• Use sewclean to get the washable marks out quickly. To remove followed it up with a cold water bath. 4-6 applications of sewclean {Unfortunately SewClean is no longer manufactured}

Quilting:

Learned How to use the quilt simulation as a block image and then 'draw' the potential quilting lines over top. This helped me get started by taking it one block at a time. Note that the lines won't all stay since EQ wants the lines to be polygons and I couldn't always place the ends correctly.

After the initial quilting the background needed more echo lines and we were much happier when it was done.

Note that I'm sewing the Hanging Sleeves to the back for my own quilts that will not be going into any shows. I love machine sewing as much as possible.

Marker Clean-up and Color Fastness

Once the quilt was done.... yes, even the corners were hand-sewn closed ...it was time to get wet! Time to see if the Save My Bleeding Quilt instructions would remove the marker on the lighter fabrics and if the greens and blues would bleed.

Pre-Wash squares where the numbers were showing through (half were pre-treated with Sew-Clean and the other half in each block was not. 

Log cabin, block 3, showing through:

Log cabin (block 3) treated with Sew Clean, the ink fades quickly:

Log Cabin (block 3) untreated numbers showing through:

Dutchman's Puzzle (block 7) showing bleedthrough:

Dutchman's Puzzle (block 7) half treated with sew clean:

Dutchman's Puzzle (block 7) left untreated:

Card Trick (block 8) treated with sew clean:

Card Trick (block 8) showing bleedthrough:

During the first 10-minutes agitation in the water there was a blue/green tinge to the water, but after that the color disappeared. Nothing that I would consider a color 'burp'.

After the first 12-hour soaking:

Another 1.5 days soaking with water refreshes then a pass through the washer and dryer created a bright and clean quilt.

No hint of dye remains:

Dutchman's Puzzle block and no dye remaining:

Card Trick is completely clean also:

And here it is! Look how bright those whites are. No bleeding colors. And it is 22" square.

Soaking Lessons Learned:

• Have enough battery life in your phone to be able to time the 10-minutes because it's not easy agitating a quilt in hot water
• Save My Bleeding Quilt instructions work terrific for removing marking pen and extra fabric dye
• Start the process on Friday night because on weekday mornings I don't have time before work to change out the water.

Hanging

Hubby hung a picture hook so I could use the extra Hang-It-Dang-It to hang the quilt in a place where it would start to cover the big open wall space behind me during video calls.

All done and I'm so pleased with how this test turned out. And there's another quilt on the walls.