Placemat Monday III - Bon Appétit

Here is my third placemat that I made for use at our upcoming quilt show. 

From one of the quilting bloggers that I follow, I discovered a neat new tool that I'll use for quilting from now on.   It's a gel pen with magic capabilities.   I bought a set of 2 of these Pilot Frixion pens for $5.00 at a local drug store.  They are available anywhere you can buy office supplies.  I checked on Staples.ca website, and they have them there but it says they are not in the retail stores.  I am hoping that it's just referring to the 6-pack.  

Here is how  used the FriXion pen.

I used the FriXion pen to mark where I wanted to quilt on my placemat.  I marked the entire placemat before I layered on the batting and backing.   So far the process is the same as last weeks placemat, when I used a pencil.

Then layer, and machine quilt your piece as usual. 

The great thing about this gel pen, is that after you have finished quilting on your fabric, you can make the marks totally disappear (almost instantly) with the passing of a hot iron over them.

Now, that's not the end of the story.   If for any reason, you need your marks to re-appear, simply put your fabric piece in the freezer. 

The marks will re-appear.  Make them disappear again with the hot iron.  To permanently remove the marks, you will lightly launder your piece with a mild soap. 

Here is the package of pens that I bought.  The pens are available in different colors.   I bought the black ones.  Later this week, I am going to do a couple of small mug mats as samples, and let the gel ink dry for a month or so before ironing and laundering, just to see what the result is.  Almost seems to good to be true, eh! 

A note to any of my quilting buddies in Canada ... Will you let me know if you find any FriXion Gel pens in any of the local office supply sections of stores.  If they are hard to find, I'll bring a supply back with me.