Hi Gang, What do you folks use for marking your quilts for quilting? I have one of those pencils with white on one end and blue on the other...the darn things break every time I sharpen them...I now have a stub on each end and have only marked my wedding dress and a couple of other places for cutting...not very happy with it obviously. I saw a pack of taylor's chalk, three colours, but not sure it will wash out...
So I have come to my friends the professionals!
What do you think, use, reccommend?
Thanks,
KimUK

I've tried a few different kinds of quilt marking pencils Kim and found the one that works best is a regular writing pencil! It shows up on most material and washes right out.

Dorian

Hi Dorian, Thanks for the advice. A regular pencil won't work on the quilt I have to mark this time around...

Any other suggestions?
Kim

Kim, what kind of design were you thinking of quilting? Would a grid work? If so, you can use 1/4" masking tape to mark it off.

A sliver of soap works well, too - the thin edge marks well, and it washes out! I hope these are useful suggestions.

Gerda

What about drawing/tracing your designs on tissue paper and pinning it carefully? Then stitch on the lines, and tear off. Tissue paper is very easy to remove.

Gerda

I used a refillable chalk wheel. It worked great for a dark quilt. This time I'm using masking tape for cross hatch quilting. Are you machine quilting?

Kim, that's a very interesting design and lends itself to a lot of different quilting designs. I tend to use masking tape when doing straight lines and stipple or meander quilt that doesn't need marking.

Mary

I have one of those refillable chalk sticks that works great on dark fabrics.

Interesting quilt! It looks pretty large. Is it a king size?

Hello, Thank you folks for all of the great advice. I think I'm going to try the soap slivers and see how that goes....
I will be machine quilting it. Probably do different things in different areas.
Take care and watch this space for my pics of me tearing out my hair trying to do this bad boy!
Cheers,
KimUK

Everyone,
I have another question along these lines.....how do you decide how to quilt the quilt? Is there a certain formula, or something?
Thanks, Lila