Sometimes you need to get really, really persnickity when marking a quilt…it needs to be absolutely precise. The lettering on my nativity quilt is a case in point. I wanted the lettering to be the same font and the letterhead / logo for my school:

I asked someone in the the school’s alumni and development office, who told me the exact font (there were actually three, two of which I had on my computer–yeah!). I played with those until I had the look and size I wanted (font size was 208!), then printed them out on paper. First, I trimmed the paper to 7/8″ under the bottom line of the printing so I could line it up with the inner border.

Then I realized I needed to have done that on the top for the writing on the bottom border (the part that says 1906 Christmas Tableaux 2006), which was already trimmed shorter than that. Oops. So I just measured 7/8 inch above the smaller letters and eyeballed it to have the same “breathing room” between the lettering and the green plaid inner border.

Next step: Saral Transfer paper. Place a section of the transfer paper under the printed lettering (or design…whatever you are using). Using a stylus (a pen like thing with a small round metal ball on the end–a dead ballpoint pen, knitting needle or dull pencil work equally well) or a somewhat dull pencil, trace the design. In this case, I outlined the letters and numbers.

When you remove the printing / pattern template and transfer paper, it looks like this…dusty! However, the transfer medium stays in place better than chalk, but less well than quilter’s pencils. You can eliminate some stray dust by placing the transfer paper so that the extra bits are out the top instead of under your arm / wrist / writing hand. Then you don’t get transfer from your hand and arm moving across the paper. I like the Saral Transfer paper because I don’t have to fuss with making a zillion templates (or cutting stencils) to trace around which I would have to do to use the quilt marking pencils (to dangle whatever part of grammar that is), I can look at it right side up, trace on top and move on to the stitching.

Then, to the sewing machine! At arms’ length, or less, like when sitting at the machine, I was getting pretty critical of my stitching, thinking I’d need to pick out at least some of the letters (the “o”s and “0” — letter “O” and zero — especially). But once I got the stitching done, the thread tails pulled to the back, it looked pretty good, so think I’ll just leave it be. I’m also really relieved that the gold metallic thread and writing didn’t overpower the center of the quilt; instead, the outline works just right I think. It says what I want, but without being too in-your-face or detracting from the quilt. I hope.

I also managed to do the “logo” “d”… I wasn’t sure I could manage that really fiddly bit in the center. I think I held my breath until the whole thing was done… the center part is maybe 1×1 inch or less…really small! If you right click on the photo, a larger view should open in another window.

And for a brief detour from marking quilts….

Although I usually dislike (intensely) self-help books, I know many folks gain a lot from them. I finally decided I’d take a close look at The Creative Habit by Twyla Tharp, the choreographer. What a wonder! This book is FULL of wonderful things for the artist. A quotation I read on Sunday resonated especially:

“Without passion, all the skill in the world won’t lift you above craft. Without skill, all the passion in the world will leave you eager but floundering. Combining the two is the essence of the creative life.” (p. 173)

That’s IT in a nutshell!

There are times when you actually have to mark a quilt top. One example is the lettering on the top and bottom borders of my nativity quilt (the next post). Another is an intermediate amount of fussiness: marking general guidelines.

I took a series of photos showing how I use the Chaco-Liner (from Clover) marking tools. They have a couple variations…a slimline one, and now a pen-style one. I’d like to try the pen-style, but these work wonderfully. In the first photo, you can see my white Chaco Liner in the top right of the photo with the cover removed.

In the first photo, I laid several of my circle templates on a piece of cloth.

In the second photo, I am using the white chaco-liner to outline one of the circles.

When I remove the plastic templates, you can see the lines easily. These DO dust off easily, so this is a method to use when you are going to quilt right away. If you fold up the top, the markings will smudge away.

On the left, in this photo, I just drew some curvy lines. On the nativity quilt, when I did the writing on the quilt, I simply marked lines to use (just as we use lined paper to keep our handwriting orderly) for the quilting.

Here are some of my favorite marking tools:

on the left are my blue and white Chaco-Liners. The refills on these are great…unscrew the cap. Unscrew the cap on the refill bottle and screw the bottle onto the chaco-liner and squeeze…. no way to spill! Even I can do it without making a mess!!!!

Top to bottom:

The tried-and-ture blue wash-out pens…great when you have a light background.

EZ marking pencil…all the ones that are kinda fat pencils with no paint are the same.

Roxanne’s quilter’s pencils (come in silver and white…this one is silver); soft lead but gets a sharp point, washes out nicely

Clover Chacopel chalk pencils … come in a set and I love them…soft chalk, sharpen to a sharp point, don’t dust off as easily as the chaco-liner, but still don’t require a full-immersion bath to remove…use the little brush that comes on the pencils!

So how do I mark my quilt tops? As LITTLE as possible! Marking ranks right up there in the fun index with basting and ripping out stitches. Ick! However, sometimes it is necessary.

I have developed a “vocabulary” of stitches that I use a lot that for the most part need little or no marking … some are common, some are just mine (and now shared with everyone who has taken my class or reads this post!), some are combinations gleaned from various machine quilters. My intro to machine quilting class sampler has a lot of them:

And I used a lot of these stitch patterns (and got good photos and they show well) in my first “Circular Paradox” quilt (there are a couple more in this series in my brain…maybe they’ll escape into the cloth this summer?):

For these patterns, I don’t mark at all, I just “go for it.” I look at the space available, where I want to end my stitching (so I can move on to the next area) and think how I will fill it, because I don’t want to “mop myself into a corner.” In circular paradox, I used the shapes of the fused applique pieces to define the areas:

Sometimes, I will want to add “echo” shapes. In this photo, you can see an arc in the top right done in a variegated red thread. I used a plastic circular template and my Chaco Liner chalk marking tool (made by Clover–here’s a link—this is at Hancock’s of Paducah..these are widely available, and your local quilt store can order them easily from their wholesaler). I prefer white or blue; the yellow sometimes can be tricky to get out. The chalk left by these tools dusts off easily, which means they are good for something you will quilt immediately. They don’t work at all for fiddly details or marks you need to stay put (more on that kind of marking in the next post…this series of posts keeps growing).

I will mark out an area or shape, then quilt it free-form, as I did here (even the “straight”–not quite–markings are done free-motion).

Other times, I will mark out an area like the mama and baby rabbit inside the coral/fuschia circle or the triskele (a Celtic image associated with woman) in the golden yellow “planet”. The mama and baby rabbit are from a wooden two-piece puzzle I bought in Japan (if you stick around until I post Marking the quilt, Part 4, you’ll see the puzzle). I simply laid the piece on the top, outlined it, and quilted.

For the triangle shape, I surfed Google Images and my favorite book for inspiration: Decorative Patterns of the Ancient World. I think they re-titled the book, because it is still from Dover (and therefore modestly priced) and available at Amazon. If I can’t find inspiration in this book, I need to go do something else!

And now I need to go to a meeting, so I’ll return and do Part 2 later…which involves fiddly marking!

About a week ago (how time flies!) Martha in NY asked me if I used a home machine or a long-arm for my quilting, and how I do my marking. I thought that would make a great blog post, so here we go—thanks for asking, Martha!

Now I use my beloved Janome 6600 (and want to thank Janome-America here and now for their support!):

Here’s another picture in a more common state…with the Ott Lite opened up to supplement the lighting in my room. I LOVE my plastic cutlery doohickie to the right…holds remote controls, marking tools, bamboo skewer (my favorite “poking thing”), seam ripper…..

I have always done my quilting on a home machine, starting with my entry-level Viking nearly 20 years ago. About 1993 or ’94 I actually quilted a king-sized log cabin for a friend on that machine (she was dying of cancer, and I’m happy to say it took six weeks and got done and to her two weeks before she died so she could sign the label for her husband and sons), and I’m eternally grateful she picked a simple, using-the-walking-foot design, or I never would have managed all that bulk!

And here’s me working on a quilt. Eli (age 8) was my handy photographing assistant today!

This picture shows how I bunch up the quilt to work on an area. I “oooch” the quilt into small hills and valleys, with a valley under the needle. With neighboring hills, I can easily move the quilt under the needle without having to pull the weight of the entire thing.

When machine quilting you want to make things easy for yourself: sit comfortably, have enough light, and position the quilt in such a way that you don’t have to fight gravity. If the set-up works with you, not against you, you can then concentrate on making good stitches and putting them where you want them. You don’t want anything to pull on the needle (thereby avoiding the needle slamming into the throat plate, breaking, and doing bad stuff to your machine).

There are various ways to perfect your work environment. The best single thing you can do is have a surface that is flat and even with the bed of the sewing machine. In my case, I made a lot of high-end duvet covers and bedroom “suites” for rich folks where I used to live so I could afford this cabinet.

Here’s a close up of my hands. I LOVE Machinger’s gloves. They make my life easier; I have very dry skin, and find it hard to grip and move the quilt without some sort of gloves. Until these came out, I used the “rubber bumpies” ones. To touch the Machingers, they don’t feel like they would improve your grab / grip on the quilt, but they sure do. I can pick up a pin, a dime, or thread a needle while wearing them, and they are comfortable on all but the hottest days of summer (I’m talking days over 85 and muggy).

There are many ways to manipulate the quilt, but I find that most of the time I either “stand on my fingertips” OR use the full flat of my hand to keep the area on which I am working smooth and flat. In any case, ***** keep your fingers well away from the needle zone***** . … I can tell you from experience that that a needle though the finger hurts, a lot, and the machine inevitably stops in the needle down position so that you have to hand-walk the flywheel to extract the needle. Ouch.

A simpler way to get a large flat surface than buying an expensive cabinet is to use a table, and that’s what I’d do now (back then I needed something that closed up so I could keep my then-2-year old’s fingers out of things like trashing an expensive machine or getting hurt on the needle). Cut a hole in a table, make a drop-in shelf, and use that. Here’s a GREAT link on how to make your own sewing table. You’ll need a drill, jigsaw, table, some basic tools like screwdrivers, and a little extra wood and the hardware equivalent of notions. If you don’t have a table, you can make a sturdy one from plywood and galvanized pipe (for the legs); your local home center can cut the plywood down to a size you can use on their panel saw.

If you don’t have room or can’t afford to buy or make something like this right now, you can improvise. A *large* extension table (most sewing machine stores will order them—Dream World is a great brand, and made in the USA, and available on-line–just google “Sew Steady”) is key. You order them to fit your sewing machine. If you work on something like the dining room table, the “drop off” from the extension table to the table is about 3-4 inches, and isn’t enough pull to cause havoc. The extended surface gives your hands room to move and manipulate the quilt with skill–something that simply isn’t possible on the surface of home sewing machines…the “bed” area is smaller than your hands, so too small for them to move. Like I said, make things easy for you so you can concentrate on the quality and placement of the stitches.

No matter what, the one thing you don’t want is to have the quilt dragging off the edges, like this:
The weight of the quilt will pull towards the floor (gravity works on quilts as well as our bodies….), which will (a) make it harder for you to control and move the quilt, (b) make your body sore fighting the quilt, and (c) pull on the needle, possibly slamming into the throat plate and doing bad things (in addition to turning the air blue when you react….ahem!). I can tell when the quilt has shifted and some of it has gone off the back edge just from the pull / feel of the quilt as I’m working. I look for the first good place to stop moving, then re-adjust the quilt onto the top of the surface.

You also want to have the quilt supported to the left of you…basically under your left elbow. Usually I accomplish this by folding the quilt up and onto the table surface as in the picture up above, but you can also put a cart, table or ironing board (lowered to cabinet / sewing table height) at right angles to your sewing surface. If you use the ironing board and the quilt drags too much on the cloth cover, tape a garbage bag over the top to make the surface slippery.

Here are a couple of links I’ve found over time:

For a good review of Designing a Sewing Space, check out this link. This site covers more than just quilting, but the ideas work, and there is good info about ergonomics…as in how to set things up so you don’t make your body hurt.

Carol Taylor has my dream studio…. if you go to her home page and click on “Carol’s Studio” (in the list of web pages on the left), you’ll see why I’m in lust….

Since this has gotten long, I’ll do the quilt marking (as little as I can manage–the marking that is, not the writing) in the next post. But before I go, I’ll ‘fess up and share my thread stash…which I love at least as much as my fabric: