Love Ewe’s Great Chalk Debacle of 2017

As some of you have already seen, I was recently working on an adorable Custom Quilt called Love Ewe to the Moon and Back. It’s done and delivered and I will show you finished pictures soon, but first I want to talk about The Great Chalk Debacle of 2017!

Love Ewe to the Moon and Back was hand quilted. After the whole top was appliqued and I sandwiched all the layers, I prepped the top with bright green chalk lines to follow for my hand quilting. This is very standard procedure, and I’d like to preface this by saying that this is a chalk pencil that I’ve had for years and have never had a problem with it before.

Here is a picture of the chalk lines, before being washed at all.

I washed the quilt with my standard washing routine: no agitation, warm not hot water, throw in a color catcher just to be sure no running issues arise (I always pre-wash my fabric, but better to be safe than sorry), usually the gentle cycle, etc.

Mind you the quilt was finished a whole weekend early! I was supposed to drop the quilt to the post office on Monday, and I finished the binding Friday evening. Wow, I would wash and dry it tonight and get it out tomorrow and be ahead of the game…..not so much.

I always have a knot in my stomach when I first wash quilts. I don’t know why–I follow all of the rules of washing and I’ve never ruined a quilt, but nonetheless, I’m always a bit nervous about it. I went down to the washer to check the quilt before putting it in the dryer (another standard routine I always follow….just in case) and there it was, all this wet chalk….like it wasn’t washed at all.

Wet chalk picture.

It was a good thing I checked it before drying it. All of that currently wet chalk would have dried and caked up and been set in and practically impossible to wash out. So I washed it again. This time I turned up my brand new washer to “Very Soiled” and put the water as high as I could without being on “Hot” and I added an extra rinse cycle, and I even added some Borax into the detergent. That’ll do it.

Nope.

So I washed it again….

…and again…

….and now it was late at night, the chalk was lightening, but not going away. So I went to bed. Defeated by chalk. With no hope of meeting my early deadline, and not sure what I was going to do if it didn’t come out.

In the morning, I washed the quilt again. For anyone keeping track, this was the fourth cycle through the wash. And the chalk was holding steadfast.

So I did what any expert and professional quilter would do….

I called my mother. Practically crying.

I explained exactly how I had laundered it, how I was keeping it wet so that the chalk wouldn’t dry and how this bright green halo of chalk just wouldn’t clear off this beautiful grey fabric.

Side Note: Chamomile tea is My Family’s version of Windex from My Big Fat Greek Wedding.

Mom tells me to use Brown Soap. Brown Soap is second only to Chamomile Tea in my world. I never even knew what the actual name of it was until recently. It’s just always been affectionately referred to as “Brown Soap.” (Apparently, also known as Fels-Naptha, you can find it in most Grocery stores, with the laundry detergents, wrapped in paper.)

Of course. Why didn’t I think of that?!

So there I was: 11am on a Saturday (with no hopes of getting to the Post Office on time) scrubbing away chalk from every single quilting stitch with a soft bristle toothbrush and a tupperware filled with a bar of brown soap and about an inch of warm water, spread across my kitchen counter huddled under a desktop Ott Light for hours.

I threw it into the washer for the fifth time and waited. Finally, after all of that, it came out completely. As if nothing had happened. What a pain in the tuchus.

And there you have it. The Great Chalk Debacle of 2017.

Chalk Free is the way to be.