What's the best way to mark the quilting design for machine quilting or do you just stitch without marking?

Pam: Well, if you mark your quilt then you have to wash it out so that's one thing to think about. If you don't mind washing your quilt before I mean with all the other stuff. I never really like to wash my quilt so I have tried to find ways to mark it that don't actually leave marks on the quilt.

One of my favorite ways if I'm doing straight lines is the blue painter tape that you get from the paint store and it comes in different widths. They even come in 2-inch width, an inch and a half-inch, even smaller so that's a great way.

Another way is by using Golden Thread's Paper. And they have all kinds of pattern books and they have continuous line designs and you can pick one. Well maybe you have a block that's 6-inches so you could get a pattern, a continuous line pattern that will fill that space and you trace it on this Golden Thread's Paper once.

And then you cut a bunch of squares, put them underneath it with that on top, staple them together, and run them through your sewing machine without any thread, and it makes perforation marks on your pattern line.

Then you can take those apart and the perforation mark will stick to your quilt top and you can put maybe a couple of pins in it and then you sew over that pattern and then you have no marks.

All you do is take out the remaining little pieces of paper, or you can do your shapes where you practice with shapes and you just do some free motion.

You know maybe you're going to do some squiggles and stuff and then you throw in a little heart or you can do something like a clam shell or leaves or nice and easy you do like a whole if you practice a whole trail of leaves down a border and you stagger them from one side to the other but I tend to not mark.

I did have one of my favorite quilts that I had really interesting quilting on it and I marked the lines because they were big circles with yellow chalk and the yellow chalk did not come out of my quilt.

Penny: Oh no.

Pam: That was not fun.

Penny: I had that happen with that blue stuff that's supposed to be washable. You know the marking pens.

Pam: Why yes.

Penny: I would think that would just flow right out yeah.

Happy Quilting!