More applique and testing new marking pens

I've made some progress on my Coxcombs and Currants quilt and the more blocks that get added, the more I love this quilt.
I have had a couple of enquiries about making the block available but I've lost the emails so if you'd like a copy, please email me and I'll be happy to send it to you. My address is available in my profile on the side bar, just click "Janet" and put "coxcomb block" in the subject line and let me know.

I'm so mad keen to keep going that I decided to draw up the design for the hand quilting and trapunto planned for the plain squares.

I do have the fabric marked but it's hard to see in the photo above so I pinned the master pattern up for you to see.  

I decided to mark my quilting design as I go so it won't be such a tedious job later on. These are the new pens I'm using. They're quite safe to stay in the quilt long term and will wash out completely after the quilt is finished.

I wrote about the washable Berol pens here and was thrilled to see they've bought the coloured ones out. They're made in England and I purchased them on EBay for a great price and the postage was excellent too.

I test all my marking pens before using them and I thought you might like to see how.

The test piece on the right has been steam pressed with a really hot iron, and the one on the left has not.

I plunged the samples into cold water, left them for five minutes and you can see the colour coming out quite well except for the dark blue.

The photo below shows the samples after I plunged my fingertips in and swirled the water a few times. The ink has dissipated into the water. Except for that dark blue.

These are the samples after drying and pressing. It's hard to make out but every bit of ink has washed out except that dark blue which is very faint in both pieces. The blue is a fail. The fabric with the pin is the steam pressed one. As you can see, steam pressing made no difference to how the ink washed out.

I'm very confident about using these pens, I had more trouble with the red fabric bleeding on a couple of blocks so they're going to get another bath with some colour remover.