Colored Pencils to Create Your Own Color of Fabric

I have searched for months looking for just the right fabric for the faces on my cancer quilt.  When I find a close enough shade and study it for awhile I realize it is just too "flat" for what I am wanting.  It just lays there and has no movement, I couldn't even find a small area in any of my beloved batiks that would serve the purpose.   Somewhere in my memory I remembered reading that you could alter small amounts of fabric for applique to achieve depth and alter the shade.   So after doing a little research I decided to try this technique.  I first purchased a new box of Prismacolor Colored Pencils as suggested.

 As a child I always LOVED receiving a new box of crayons, my favorite being the box of 64, I enjoyed the beauty of the sharp, unbroken colors of the crayons, it always made my little heart go pitty pat.  Much to my surprise opening the new box of colored pencils had a similar effect.  So after  that little bit of excitement was over I was on to the next step.
I chose Kona cotton in an off white almost cream color as my fabric.  Kona is a little more densely woven and I felt it would hold up better under the friction of the shading with the pencil.  To stabilize the fabric I ironed a piece of freezer paper to the back side of my fabric.

Using the side of the lead I proceeded to color my fabric using a circular motion being careful not to get one area obviously darker  than the other and yet not make it look flat.

 The shaded fabric is very hard to distinguish but I "moved" the color around using a Qtip and to make it permanent put a light coating of textile medium over the colored area  and pressed it with a hot iron.
I would not attempt this on a large area but believe it is going to fit my need for the faces and hands on my cancer quilt.