Product Review and Give-Away: Saral Wax-Free Transfer Paper

Aging myself here, but do you remember back in highschool taking home economics class and one of the things we just had to have in our supply list was coloured waxed paper and a tracing wheel? I hated that stuff with a passion. It rubbed off so easily and just made a heck of a mess. It wasn’t too long ago that I found that original pack from highschool in a file folder. I unearthed it and blue and yellow crap everywhere. What a messy discovery that was. No, I have no idea why I had kept it all these years.

Let’s fast forward to, ya know, the current century, and take a look at Saral’s Wax-Free Transfer Paper. The folks at Saral were kind enough to send me a sampler package to play with.

In the sampler package comes 5 sheets of transfer paper, one of each colour: white, red, yellow, blue and black (graphite):

If life hadn’t gone a little crazy earlier this year, I’d actually have my bed quilt ready for quilting and could show you how the transfer paper works on an actual project. Instead, I grabbed a couple of scrap blocks to test with.

The transfer paper is pretty thin, not quite as thin as tracing paper, but thinner than regular printer paper and slightly delicate. I used the edge of a regular mechanical pencil to draw my lines. A ball point pen or an unpointed tool like a stylus would have been better. I had to press lightly with my pencil so as not to tear the paper.

I drew four lines on my dark fabric: white, red and two yellow lines. I wanted to test the smudge-ability and if the line erased too quickly just with handling. You’ll see the top of the red line and the first yellow line where I tried to rub it off, quite vigorously with my hands. While they are a lighter, they can still be seen quite easily. Very handy when machine quilting, as I hate when chalk products or disappearing ink vanishes before I can finish the project.

I did the same rub off test with the blue transfer paper on a scrap of white fabric, sorry the picture is a bit blurry:

The next test was to see how easy does it come off the fabric when I’m all done with it. Before I did this test, I heat-set with a hot iron and steam, as if my test fabrics were the background of appliqué blocks. I then used a moistened cloth and lightly pressed it to the lines. The blue fabric came out very quickly and the white just needed an extra rub to get the line to disappear.

I was impressed, especially that I could heat-set it and it washed out just perfectly. I’m really big into appliqué these days and this will be fantastic for drawing my placement lines on my background fabric. I also want to try back-basting appliqué and this will be really useful for that too. For me, it’s all about being able to wash away my lines when I’m done with them. Of course, I’ll be sure to test my actual project fabric, just in case.

I could also use it to draw my quilting lines and have the confidence that the lines are not going to vanish before I finish the quilt. Saral has a really useful web site, so you can read more usage ideas over there. You can buy economy rolls of the product too.

This is one product that has definitely improved since my high school years.

Now for the give-away! Saral has generously donated 10 sampler packages for my blog readers. Each package contains one 8 1/2″x11″ sheet of each colour as shown above. To enter the give-away, leave a comment below telling me creatively how you would use this product. Winners will be chosen next Wednesday.

QuiltAlbum Blog Hop

Don’t forget to visit today’s bloggers in the QuiltAlbum Blog Hop. Come back tomorrow for my special day!

• Linda lum deBono – Dzyning Things
• Vanessa Christenson – V and Co.

P.S. Facebook friends, you must enter on the blog post itself to be entered in the give-away. Click here to enter.