Quilt Top Marking Tutorial

I was looking for a way mark quilt tops with quilting designs without directly marking the fabric and came up with this technique which has been working extremely well for me. It utilizes water soluble interfacing and is better than the quilting paper because it tears off more easily and doesn't stress your stitching. Anything left in tightly quilted areas or under the quilt stitching just washes away! I've used it several times now, even on white fabric with white thread, and have had absolutely no problems with anything leaving a mark or color behind on the quilt.

Supplies:







Pinned quilt sandwich
Sulky's Solvy Water Soluble Stabilizer (on the bolt, then you can make one piece as long as you need it, and it's less expensive than the packages.)
Crayola Washable Markers, fine point
Tape
Pattern
Straight Pins

1. Pick and scale quilting pattern to size needed.

2. Tape pattern to table, tape stabilizer tautly over pattern.

3. Using washable marker, trace pattern onto stabilizer.

4. Pin stabilizer to quilt top. Remove any basting safety pins and replace with straight pins on top of interfacing as you go along.









5. Free motion quilt along pattern lines.











6. Tear off as much stabilizer as you can. (It will stick to dog and cat noses, so please dispose of it properly).

7. When top is entirely quilted and quilt is bound, wash and dry quilt.

Posh Bird

I finished the bird quilt for Anna's Christmas present! It's cute, don't you think? I really like the border combo that Paige and I came up with.

I love the fabric on the back. It's a bummer it's on the backside!

I quilted it with a pastel variegated thread. I had really meant to use white thread in the white areas, and variegated in the printed blocks, but I forgot to change thread colors and didn't notice until I had 4 of the sash areas already quilted. To quote DiscoJen "Oh well! It's done now!" The variegated is nice though, it breaks up the white areas nicely. There is a saying in the quilting community to address just this situation: "There are no mistakes in quilting, only design opportunities."
I used a pattern from the AQG magazine I happened to pick up just prior to quilting, and was pleased when I leafed through it and saw the perfect pattern and it was the right size! How fortuitous!

I found a new way of marking the quilt top that I have to share with all of my quilting friends! I'm very excited because it worked exceptionally well, and is a lot less expensive than the Golden Threads paper. It doesn't wipe off like chalk, and you don't have to worry about whether ironing or washing it will make the marks permanent.

I used Sulky transparent water soluble interfacing that I got at Joanne Fabrics when it was on sale for half off a few weeks ago. I did find (on a test scrap, luckily) that you need to use a washable marker to trace your patterns onto the interfacing though. Once you trace your pattern, pin it to the quilt top, stitch on the lines, then pull off. Anything left or caught in the stitching will dissolve when you wash the quilt! I found that I like it better than the golden threads paper, because the paper sometimes pulls at the stitches, and is a royal pain in the patooty to pick out of smaller stitched areas.

The bolt that you find behind the cutting counter, in with the interfacing is significantly cheaper than the packets that are on the notions wall. It was $1.50/yd on the bolt! And you can cut much longer sections from the bolt so as to not have to piece the patterns together, making for smoother free motion.

Here's a close up of the quilting patterns: