I Implore You, for the Sake of Your Quilt

On Thursday afternoon I was feeling excited about the ta-da moment of posting my washed and dried snowball and nine-patch quilt for little Olivia.  I'd finished the binding early in the day and tossed the quilt in the washer.  When I pulled it out and examined it I found that the pencil marks for the quilting had not washed out!  Drat!

I was disappointed.  I used pencil on my String-X quilt and it washed out completely.  And I'd sampled pencil on some of the fabrics in this quilt and they washed out.  I know nothing about the chemistry of pencil on fabric.  Maybe some fabrics soak in the graphite, or maybe the longer the pencil is on the fabric, the harder it is to remove.  It doesn't matter.  I would just rather not have pencil lead on a finished quilt.

Being the sensible sort, I did not panic.  I got online and searched how to remove pencil marks from fabric.  I found many suggestions.  I tried each then washed the quilt and air-dried it before trying the next.  Unfortunately none of them were completely effective. 

I tried

• Goop.  It is my go-to stain remover and nearly never fails me.  Chances are it would probably remove pencil from jeans (where it matters much less than it matters on a new baby quilt!).
• a white eraser.  That was a big mistake.  It rubbed the fiber the wrong way.
• liquid hand soap which had no effect whatsoever.
• a mixture of water, alcohol, and dish soap as recommended at Quilt History.  It was ineffective.
• Fels Naphtha rubbed on the marks.  It had no effect.
• ammonia.  This may have lightened some of the pencil lines but did not remove the darkest of them.
• Lestoil.  This may also have lightened some of the lines but also did not remove the darkest of them.

Lestoil was my last resort.  I used a q-tip to dab it onto the pencil lines, washed it, then into the dryer.  While the pencil lines are still there, the puckers in the fabric around the quilting seem to camouflage all but the very worst of the lines.  I've decided it's a fact that pencil is nearly impossible to remove from fabric.  I can only take comfort in knowing that my great-grandmother's quilt, made in the 1920s or 1930s, also has residual pencil marks and it is no less beautiful nor serviceable than if they were not there.

Still, I implore you for the sake of your quilt,

Please do not use pencil to mark quilting lines!

And one last photo, just for the fun of it.  The view into my washer after the last wash.

 --Nancy.
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