How to Mark a Quilt and Quilt Marking Tools

I'm going to talk to you today about marking for machine quilting. A lot of us do quilting without any marketing at all but it's nice to add marked quilting to your repertoire too. You can get exact repeats and exact perfect shapes which works well for some quilts. Doesn't have to be done on all of them but it's nice to know how to do this in addition. The designs can come from a lot of places. I collect a lot of books that have continuous line designs that are specially made for machine quilting. They've got long lines for your stitching so you don't have to break the stitching real often to be able to continue across your quilt. And I actually have a lot of these books myself just because you never know what shape you're going to want for different quilts. So every time a new one comes out, I at least look at it and often get them for my own collection. The designs also can come in packets. Here's a really nice packet from golden threads that has a lot of associated feather designs. They work well together to give a unified look to your quilt because this whole collection goes together as a group of feathers. Another favorite designer of mine is Harry Wallner. She does really complicated looking continuous line designs but she makes it easy for you by giving you a little roadmap right here. Well, let me open it up. Here's the whole big design and you might look at that and go, Oh my gosh how would I figure out where I'm going next? Well, she has this little roadmap right here that tells you where to start and where to stitch and where to go next. So here's just a brief tour of her design. She has, you start at the top of this flower and follow it down to here. Then following the roadmap you go up do the inside part of the flower. And down to this side, think of this as a flame the inside of the flame, the middle line of the flame the outer line of the flame and onto the next flower. And then before you know it, you're back at a flower again, you can go, all the way around this entire piece in just one single line of stitching. She's got a lot of different collections and all of these are things I like to have at my house so I have many designs to choose from when I'm getting ready to mark a quilt. Another thing that's real handy is stencils. And these stencils, you lay on your quilt and you mark through the slots. Stencils often are best marked on a quilt top before it's layered, but you can do it on a layered quilt if you forgot to, or couldn't make a decision before you got around to the layering time. And once again this has a little roadmap to show you where you're going because when you just look at the whole design it can be mind-boggling to figure out how you're going to go around that whole thing. Here's several others with roadmaps. And every time you see a nice little S shape that's probably a continuous line design. another with a roadmap. Here's one that's been really fun to use. And then here's one that is not designed as continuous line but you can make it be, and I'll show you in a little bit how we're going to do that. So that stencils, you also can use templates and templates can come in little sets of graduated sizes, and these are nice simple shapes that are real versatile. You can make up your own designs drawing on paper and making a stencil out of it or marking right on your quilt around the edges. I sometimes make my very own stencils. Probably everybody knows how to fold paper make a snowflake. And this is the same kind of an idea. If I take a piece of paper, the size of the piece I need to fill on my quilt, I can fold it and cut it out. And I only have to cut, you know an eighth of the piece correctly. And because of the fold, they'll all be duplicate sizes open it up, trace it onto template plastic and use this template to mark around. Here's the nice shape for filling in a setting triangle. And if I need a different size I'll just take it to a copy machine and enlarge it or make it smaller and make a new template out of it. You can see, I have an extra line in here. So when I mark around this, on my quilt, I'll remember that I want to put in that little line to just gives a little bit more detail to that shape. Well, how are we going to get these marks on the quilt? I have a bunch of different marking tools. I brought in everything I have at home and a few marking tools from some friends too for any kind of marking tool you ever use, you always want to be sure to test it first. You want to test to make sure that it gives you a line that you can actually see while you're quilting and for machine quilting you're going pretty fast. You need to have a really distinct line and you want to be sure that you can remove that mark when you want to. So be sure to read the instructions and if you have a marker that comes in a package and all the information is on the package be sure you save that and put the marker back in it. You don't to get them mixed up. This is the infamous blue marker. A lot of people are afraid to use this marker because they've heard bad stories about it not coming out of the fabric. I've never had that problem at all but maybe it's because I'm so careful about using it. This specific marker is set by heat. So I don't want to iron my quilt after I've marked it or put it in a hot car and drive to Arizona and leave it there for two weeks I'd probably set it to. This is removed by water and not just spraying of water but completely immersing the quilt in water. If you just spray that the marking will go down into your batting and may come back later. So I mark this with quilts that I know I'm going to immerse when I'm all done with the quilting. And here's how you make sure that you can see the marks on there that works real well. I'd be able to see that very well if I were machine quilting. Here's another marker, this is a thicker one. And it's one you also might want to use that too if that's the right color for you. And if you have a thicker mark you might feel better about hitting the marks that you're stitching. This is a chalk marker, leaves the thinner line, and you're going to need the directions to see how to remove it. Sometimes these brush off as you're quilting but it doesn't seem to be a problem with this particular fabric. Here's another chalk marker in blue. So it's what you can see and of course, if I were marking a quilt I would take this fabric and rinse it or whatever the instructions say to get rid of those particular marks. This is kind of a cool marker. It has three different markers, all in the same thing. It has a white marker, a colored one and a pencil marker in it too. Marking on dark fabrics can be problematic. Here's one way, any way to do that. This is a fine white marking pen. I'm just going to put a little line here. And this is the Mark that shows up as a little bit of time goes by. You see, when I first drew it, you could barely see it and now it's starting to show up. This one is removed by ironing. So you want to be sure you don't mix that up with your other things. And so I always put this one back in it's package So I don't forget that I need an iron to remove this particular one Another way to mark is with the quilt pounds. A lot of you may have used this already. There's a reservoir in here that you put chalk and then you just rub this across your fabric with stencil between. So I'll just do that here. When it says pound, you don't pound it onto your fabric. You pound the chalk to go down into the applicator and then you rub it across your fabric like this. And let's hope it all went through like it should, and there I have some really nice to stick lines including other things in the stencil that I didn't really need a nice distinct line to be able to machine quilt on. When I do machine quilting, I want to fill in those bridges so that I don't get lost at the end of the line. Let me show you a little bit on this one. If I were marking this fabric, I would probably do it with the infamous blue marker. So I like to mark in the direction that I saw it's kind of a good way to have practice. or doing that continuous line. So this is a design that's not intended to be continuous or it's not marked exactly continuous. I'm going to mark it on this piece of fabric as if it were continuous. So I'm going to start here and I'm going to come up to where the stem is, and then you do the stem and you're going to stitch backwards. And then you stitch, I like to do the complete curve the gentle curve of the leaf. And then when you get to the tip then you do the rest of the curve back to the stem and down. That might seem silly that I'm doing it but it's going to help me remember when I'm stitching to where I backtrack and where I go next, come up to here. Here's another stem back down to the part of the leaf the curve of the leaf, the tip of the leaf, and down back to the stem and back, cetera, and do all of that. When you take the stencil off, look you have all these empty spaces in between. I have seen students and I have done it myself stitching along and you get to an end of a line and go, Oh my gosh, how do I get from there to there and make a really messy, ugly line. It probably sounds silly, but when your machine is going and you're thinking about stitching on the line it's really hard when you get to a place where there is no line. So I will come along here and I'm gonna fill in the lines. So I'm going to extend the stem back down to that curve. And I'm going to finish that little bit of the leaf. I'm trying to remember to do this in a continuous line and finish the leaf and down and up along the curve and fill in the curve up to this stem, may sound silly, but give it a try and see if it doesn't work better for you than just leaving the bridges and having possibly a wiggly funny ugly line where you have left a space. So that's how I mark these things and I would continue and mark the whole row that way and fill in all the spaces, trying to remember to go in a continuous path. Another way of marking that I would like to show you is what they call. This is golden threads paper. You'll mark a design on your paper and then you stitch through it and the paper tears off. So you haven't actually put a Mark on your quilt. It's really cool. This is not the same as a tissue paper. Tissue paper Won't tear off as cleanly. And you'll find yourself with tweezers trying to pick out all the little bits of paper. So this is kind of how that works. You pick a design that you like, and you put a piece of the paper over it, and you trace around it, once again following the line as if you were stitching. And this is a really cool one, cause it's all one line. This complicated looking pattern is all just one continuous line. So I would just mark that whole thing which I wont to right now, mark that whole thing and then just a little bit I'll show you a really quick way to make duplicates of that. But before we do that I want to show you how you would mark on dark fabric. This is a light box and I've got one of Harry Wallner's really cool continuous line designs and even very dark fabric. You can see the design through the fabric when you've got the light box behind it. And I would use a white marker to Mark this. And once again, I would follow the path that is marked on this little part right here which starts at the inside of a heart. And this is that white marker that doesn't seem to show up until a couple seconds after you've marked it. The tricky part about marking on a light box is you can't always tell where you've been so you have to kind of pay attention. But anyway, that's how I would Mark this whole thing on a light box. So most of you don't have a light box at home and I don't have one either but there are things that you can do that are just as good as a light box. If you have a really small quilt or small things, you're marking, you can use a window on a sunny day and just tape your quilt up to the window with your pattern taped underneath it. Or if you have a dining room table that has leaves you can pull the leaves out and you can put a storm window over it. And a lamp underneath is really glamorous but it works well. Or if you have a glass top coffee table that really works well too. So I'm going to get out my sewing machine and show you how I'm going to make multiple copies of that golden threads little pattern that I showed you a second ago. So here's the little pattern that I traced from the book onto golden threads paper. And I've stacked several layers of the paper underneath it. I think I have eight layers. You can probably do up to 10 or 12. Well, try it and find out what you can do. And I'm going to stitch on this line, I'll perforate multiple pieces by doing this. And once again I'm still going to stitch this the way that I will quilt when I'm quilting, when I'm actually quilting. So that I've traveled that path before and that muscle memory can help me get it right. So I've got my machine set on needle down and I'm just going to stitch along the lines just following the pattern exactly the way that I traced it. I'm stitching this with a machine that has no thread in it because I'm just perforating, just perforating the lines and I'm not wanting them sewed together with thread this pattern has nice gentle curves. So it's pretty easy to do. And although I'm not staying exactly on the lines it'll still be a good pattern to quilt on. I have my machines set for needle down. So every time I stopped the needle would be down and this piece won't get out of place. I need to stop and figure out where I'm going next, that's fine too. Since stitching through paper can tended all your needle a little bit you might want to set aside a special needle just for this. And you might want to change to a fresh needle when you are ready to actually do your quilting. I want to be sure I don't stitch into my pins. pausing it a point is a great place to stop. So there I've stitched around the whole pattern perforating the line or mostly on the line. And if I pull this apart, you can see I've got eight separate patterns from just stitching through it one time. And now I'm going to pin one of those onto the little sample I have ready to stitch, I'll pin that and I'll be ready to stitch but I got better thread my machine first. So one of the perforated patterns has been Pinned my little layered sample here, and I have thread in my machine, which is helpful for quilting. And I'm just going to quilt along the lines. I start by taking a stitch and pulling up the bobbin as always. So the bobbin thread doesn't get tangled and use needle down and just stitch along the perforated line. I like to stop where there's a point. It's a good place to transition and start another shape. I stitch just one of those little flower shapes. And that's enough to show you how this golden threads paper works. So here's the one little shape that's quilted and you can probably tell, I didn't even catch all of my lines very well, but what I want to do is show you how nicely this paper, tears off. Tore off the big parts and even the little tiny parts come off real easily. Anything that's left in there you can just kind of scratch and get it off. So that's just a great way to mark your quilt without quilting and be able to have the markings come right off. Now, I want to show you a couple of quilts that I've quilted with marked motifs and show you a little bit how I did that. I brought a couple of quilts that have marked quilting that I did on them. This is a little snow ball block that I happened to have exactly the right size templates or stencil to fit in it. So that doesn't happen but it's always exciting when it does. And if it hadn't been the right size, I could have traced it on paper and blown it up or shrunk it in a copy machine. this poor quilt didn't get its border quilted because it had to be hanging in a shop for a class before I had time to quilt it. So it's probably not too late to go back and quilt it. And I pulled out a couple of templates that I'd already made from before that might work because there's a heart in here. It seems to make sense to put a heart in the border. And here's a little boomerang shape that I'd already cut, that would work there. Or I might want to make a curl shape like this to connect the hearts, but you can see if I mark hearts and boomerangs and hearts and boomerangs I can get a continuous line designed to go around it. What I would do though, is I would start from the corner and decide what I want the corner to look like. Whether the hearts are going to bump into each other like this, or go diagonally. And I would Mark the very center of each of the borders and then Mark in towards each other from there. Cause if I have to fiddle with the shapes a little bit I don't want it in the corner and I don't want it exactly on the side. So that'd be an easy way to do that. The other quilt that I brought is it has a lot of squares in it and a big wide border. Whenever you have a bunch of squares, it's always kind of fun to quilt circles, overlapping circles. It gives a nice curved lines which are good added to straight lines of squares. I made a template that's just the right side to go through all of those corners. I got out a piece of graph paper. I drew my three inch square and with a compass point in the middle, I drew a circle that would cut right through the corners of the square. And I just mark overlapping circles. And it didn't take all that long to do it. And this makes a continuous line designed to. I changed threads with each of the fabric colors. And so you can do a continuous path around each of the colors. For the border, I pulled out some of the designs that I've had that I really liked. And this is one of Harry Wallner's that I loved the hearts here but this flower was more quilting than I wanted to do. So I adapted it a little bit. Plus the hearts weren't quite the right size. So I took a piece of paper paper that was the size of the length of my boarder, and I folded it and fold it and folded it until I had a good size for the pattern repeat. And I traced that onto template plastic. So this is the fancy heart here. And I traced around that and moved the heart. And I made another template for inside of the heart, was from there and I just centered it in this heart. And I traced around that. And instead of that fancy flower shape I just put it in a simple heart and teardrop. So all of this is continuous line and I wanted to be sure that the corner was real pretty. So I've got two hearts budding up against each other and then there was space to put in just a teardrop to finish that out. So this is how I do my marking and my quilting. I really love to do marked designs because I like having them the designs be exactly the same across the quilt. It's a nice thing to add to doing free motion on mark designs too. So I hope that something that I've shown you here today will inspire you to give this a try.