Marking a quilt for quilting

          There are a number of ways to mark a quilt for quilting.  Stencils are available for a wide variety of designs.  Rulers and templates can be used to draw designs on the quilt top.  There are papers that are available to draw on, pin to the quilt and quilt over.  All of these work and can work well.  But there is another method I like to use if I want to do something that is not available in those other methods.
           I had a quilt in which I had appliqued lizards crawling through open cubes.  I wanted to quilt those same lizards in the background.  So I used the method described below.

The lizards were actually cut from the backing fabric.  I used those lizards to create a pattern to quilt as part of the background.

          You will need your design, freezer paper, an iron and either white chalk (in stick form) or a pounce pad. 
          Trace your design onto the front (non-shiny side of the freezer paper.) 

Cut out your design and iron it onto your quilt top.  This can be done before or after you sandwich the quilt.  In fact, if you are doing a lot of marking you will need to do it after the layering and a little at a time. (You can iron on the designs before but don't mark until you are ready to quilt.)

Next rub the pounce pad over your freezer paper and quilt top.  

Your design will look a little like this.

Next peel the freezer paper off.  You will get something that looks like this.

You have a negative image that you can quilt around.  Some people skip this step and stitch around the freezer paper.  But with that you run the risk of catching the paper in your stitches, making it hard to remove the paper.  With this method you can also quilt designs within the outline, such as the circle in the picture above.  Once you finish quilting, remove the pounce powder according to the directions.  

If you don't have a pounce pad and don't want to invest in one, get some simple white chalk in stick form.   

Rub the chalk around the edge of the freezer paper.  Start on the paper and stroke off of it for best results.

Your design will look like this.  Peel the freezer paper off.

Again, you will have a negative image to quilt around, and if wanted, inside of.  You can reuse the same freezer paper design for as long as you can still get it to stick when you iron it.  (I got about 4-6 uses from each pattern.)  

Be careful not to use anything but white chalk for this method.  Other colors of chalk do not come off the fabric easily.  As with every marking method, you should test on a scrap of your quilt fabric to make sure you can remove the markings.  

I hope you find this tutorial useful for marking those special designs on your quilts.