One of the things I inherited from my grandmother was this package of fabric crayons. They mostly hang out in one of the drawers in my craft room. Every now and then, they come out to play! (The first time I ever used them was to color on a white t-shirt that we picked up at a garage sale. The colors washed right out! It was terrible, especially with a young child looking over my shoulder! Then I re-read the instructions, re-colored the shirt, and set the color with an iron. The shirt is still colorful today!)
Recently, the crayons got to come out and play with some dark fabric. First I had to do burn test to identify the fiber content. Interpreting burn tests (hold small bit of fabric in tweezers or tongs over the flame of a candle. How does it burn? What does it smell like? How does the ash behave?--Do a google search if you need more details.) is not my strong suit, but I learned enough to trust that there is some synthetic component to this dark fabric. Whew! The crayons need 50% or more polyester in the fabric to adhere well. Time for a coloring test.
I had two tests to run. Test #1 was determining what color the crayons would be on the dark fabric. Orange on white is definitely orange, but on a dark color it's harder to know how it will look. So I drew letters with each crayon and colored them in. Orange was "o", yellow was "y", etc. "bs" is burnt sienna and "?" is a color that had no wrapper/label. Test #2 was a color transfer test. The instructions for the crayons indicate that you can color on paper, turn the paper colored side to the fabric, and iron it onto the fabric. So I tried it--and it worked! Go figure! The transferred images are not as dark as the ones where I colored directly on the fabric, but they weren't bad at all!
Recently, the crayons got to come out and play with some dark fabric. First I had to do burn test to identify the fiber content. Interpreting burn tests (hold small bit of fabric in tweezers or tongs over the flame of a candle. How does it burn? What does it smell like? How does the ash behave?--Do a google search if you need more details.) is not my strong suit, but I learned enough to trust that there is some synthetic component to this dark fabric. Whew! The crayons need 50% or more polyester in the fabric to adhere well. Time for a coloring test. 
I had two tests to run. Test #1 was determining what color the crayons would be on the dark fabric. Orange on white is definitely orange, but on a dark color it's harder to know how it will look. So I drew letters with each crayon and colored them in. Orange was "o", yellow was "y", etc. "bs" is burnt sienna and "?" is a color that had no wrapper/label. Test #2 was a color transfer test. The instructions for the crayons indicate that you can color on paper, turn the paper colored side to the fabric, and iron it onto the fabric. So I tried it--and it worked! Go figure! The transferred images are not as dark as the ones where I colored directly on the fabric, but they weren't bad at all!
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