Blue Ink for printing Paper Piecing

[Marion D.]

Here's a tip I shared with Ricky on Facebook. He told me to post it here:

I wanted to share with you what I learned in a Sharon Schamber class. The blue (cyan) ink in an HP printer is water soluable. It's what she uses to print out her fabrics with her quilting patterns on them. So my thought was if the paper foundations were printed in light blue ink - the numbers wouldn't show through the white fabrics and the ink will wash away. What I do is take a light blue pencil and retrace my paper foundations and then print them out in color on Stable Stuff (but I'm going to test out the new paper you mentioned too). I have done this before and it works beautifully. Hope this helps other members! -Lisa Burmann

[Beverly C.]

I'm going to give this a try! Thanks for sharing, Lisa.

[Nancy R.]

That's a great idea! I'll have to try it. I've had the black ink from the printer run onto my fabrics before when I've printed on Stable Stuff and left it in, so that always worries me.

[Nancy R.]

Good morning!
What a awesome idea! I had to read your email 3 times to get the "full picture", but then again, it is early and I'm still on my first cup of coffee. I can't wait to try out this tip! This can be useful for a lot of projects. I too, was able to take a class with Sharon many years ago, and what an inspiration! Thank you for passing on this tip!

FYI: One of my goals for this year, is as I see tips that are WOW, I'm going to create a little sample for future reference. This way, I will not forget about this tip. I'm good at making lists of great ideas, just not so good at reviewing them. I have also purchased a white "chalk board" that lets me write on it with a dry erase marker and I have been writing very brief notes about tips/sites, etc. It's in plain sight, and I'm really loving it.

Take care everyone!

Kathy

[Diane O.]

If your pattern is a PDF file, it is easy to change the color by opening up the file in a vector based program such as Adobe Illustrator or Inkscape, and change the color of the stroke from black to blue.
I'm working on some Wild and Goosey blocks and will need to print out some more papers soon, so I'm going to try changing the color and printing them out using blue instead of black. Most of my blocks are dark colors, so I haven't had any issues with the black ink yet, but if blue works better, I may be changing all my paper pieces patterns to blue.

Thank you for this tip!!!