Will calico be a suitable material to iron on patchwork designs? Can I use oil crayons to design the picture?

I am a Year One teacher. Focus is on the olden days. Need a simple craft lesson. Thought the kids could design a patch using oil crayons, then I could iron this onto calico and sew into a patchwork quilt. Can you help? Will it work and will the calico be ok? Also the oil crayons. Will they work as an iron-on transfer type of thing? Any help would be appreciated.

Will calico be a suitable material to iron on patchwork designs? Can I use oil crayons to design the picture?
I have never heard of such a thing, although we did color on white fabric with regular crayons for a quilt project in our guild once.





We ironed our fabric (white or light color) onto freezer paper for stability, and then we traced designs out of coloring books using a fine point pigma pen. We then colored our designs with crayons and ironed paper towels over them to absorb the wax. We then peeled off the freezer paper and made our blocks into quilts.





A couple things we learned: white on white (where there was actually a type of paint making a print on the fabric) didn't absorb evenly, creating an interesting effect. This could either be to our advantage or disadvantage, depending on how we wanted the final overall look to end up. Also,sometimes we had to really iron several times to remove all the wax. The colors weren't always bright (they were soft and pretty), and we also had the option of outlining the color with an embroidery stem stitch.





Good luck if this is the route you want to go!
Reply:I think we use the term "calico" differently - in the US it generally means any 100% cotton fabric with a small print, or any fabric intended for quilting. You want to use a fabric that is 100% cotton, plain in color, and with a good weave. Cheap muslin is probably not the best choice as it tends to have a lot of slubs and is more loosely woven, but there are better quality muslins available. If you have access to Kona Cotton, that's probably your best bet. It is smooth, clear, substantial, and comes in many colors. You could use any of the dozen or so white or creams.





As for the actual design process, check out some of the links below for detailed info. I'd recommend writing directly on the fabric, then ironing to remove the wax. You can use regular crayons for this, or find special fabric crayons. Iron the fabric to some freezer paper to keep it flat and easy to draw on. If you prefer, you can do it as a transfer, but remind the kids that everything will be reversed when you iron it on. This means no words!
Reply:If the idea is "olden days", *why* would iron-on oil crayons be used? This confuses me, especially using it on calico.





By "calico", do you perhaps mean "muslin"? Calico is usually a printed cotton fabric. The default forms of muslin are plain white and off-white.





If you want the students to have sometime somewhat closer to olden days, iron butcher paper backing to plain muslin and cut into suitable-for-you squares or rectangles. Show the students how to sandwich a pattern behind and hold it against a window to trace the pattern to the cloth with plain pencil. Then hand-color with pencils, remove the butcher paper backing (modern, but makes the cloth much easier to handle) and assemble the top as desired.





It's *not* a quilt unless it's quilted. You can put in batting and tie or tack it to make a "comforter". You can just line and tack it as though it would be a "coverlet". Any of these three can become a wall-hanging.





The "simple craft lesson" is learning one way people copied patterns way back when. Another olden days method is to prick holes in a pattern with a pin and rub chalk or graphite or even cinnamon through the holes, then connect the dots with a pencil.

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