I use stencils and either chalk, washable colored pencil, or very fine mechanical pencil to do the marking. It depends on how permanent I need the pattern to be and the color of the background. I try use the finest possible line and the least obtrusive color. For instance on a pink background, I may use a red colored pencil, because even if a little remains after washing, it blends in and just looks like a shadow line in the quilting. By and large, any time I can use the mechanical pencil, I will. I've never had a problem with it washing out and I love the superfine line--it almost disappears of its own accord when quilted.

I used a Roxanne's white chalk pencil with stencils after it was basted. I marked everything and stuck strips of press n seal over it all. I took off the press n seal when I got to that part.

Mine was a baby quilt, but since it was my learning quilt I did a pretty fancy veined oak leaf border. It didn't fit my borders evenly, so I left a bit blank in the middle and put in...dang it, I'm senile. I can't even remember what I put in those blank spots--was it an acorn or the four letters of his name? Good Lord, I'm depressed now. Maybe I forgot to put anything in there and the thing just has blank spots.

I left about a half inch blank, plus a half inch for my binding at the edge.

If you need to stretch a stencil shape to make it fit, do it at the middle of the border. People look at the corners first, to see how it turns the corner. The eyes slide along the middle, and so if one of the cables needs to expand an inch nobody will ever notice. You can plan it out on long craft paper exactly how it will be and then transfer it to your border.

I got a book--yeah, yeah, I hear you all laughing--but I do have a book "Mastering Quilt Marking" by Pepper Cory. She explains register lines, and how to transfer border cables and such from a pinned on paper draft to a border below using a T-square. Good book. :)

Don't forget Golden Rod paper. This is very thin tissue like paper. It works great for machine quilting, not so sure about hand. You mark right onto the paper, pin it to your quilt and quilt right through it. Peel it off when you're done.

You can copy quilting patterns from your computer then trace it onto the gold paper. I've done some intricate designs that I otherwise wouldn't have been able to quilt.

No, you can't hand quilt through paper. I didn't hand quilt through the press n seal, it just stuck on there so my chalk wouldn't get rubbed off until I got to that part.

I was thinking you wouldn't need some complicated way to transfer a paper pattern. You could just pin it in place and poke holes through it with a sharp pencil to make a dot to dot on the border, close enough so it'd be easy to free hand in.

Are you quilting in a hoop? And what kind of quilting design is in the main body? How wide is this border? Enquiring minds want to know.:)

An easier way to poke the holes in a paper pattern is to "sew" them on your sewing machine. Use a long stitch setting and go slowly, but it's still faster than by hand.

Ok, going to try to get pix on here, never done it before. So if it doesn't work, here is a description. Anyway, the border is 5 1/2 inches wide. All blocks are framed 1 1/4 inch. It's a large quilt, 100 by 100 inches. The blocks are 18 inches. A blue sunburst design is alternated by plain blocks, each block is framed in blue and the borders are blue. The alternate blocks are all white. I quilted the sunbursts by simply following the seam lines, not in the ditch but close to it. (Echo?) The alternate blocks have a circle in the middle with a leaf pattern that extends to each corner. I also quilted along the frames and inside the border just inside the seamlines. Oh, and you will notice I used blue quilting thread because this quilt was on request from my husband and he wanted it that way. I am still working on the alternate blocks, but plan to go back to the sunburst blocks and add a partial leaf design at each of the four corners.

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Rita

OOPS! I see I got the pix on but they are awful big, hope it didn't mess up the website! What did I do wrong?? Anyway, I forgot to say, I'm not using a frame, this thing is so big, I am just quilting it on a large work table and I have figured out how to do it without a frame, sort of like you would lap quilt only you have to manipulate it a certain way, hard to explain. I was hurting my back on the floor frame I first had it on, so I improvised.
Rita

Oh that's so pretty! Clean and fresh and breezy! Very nice stitches you have there, too.

The first thing I thought of was a simple wave, you know, just up and down, with a single small circle inside at each curve.

:) This is really hard stuff to describe. What did you have in mind?

I think I can envision what you're getting at with the waves. I'll keep that in mind when I get to the borders. I just wanted something that is easy, simple. I don't think it's going to be that noticeable anyway so I don't want to go overboard putting in a lot of work that isn't going to be noticed. Since there are a lot of curved designs already I didn't think straight lines would be the right choice. Anyway, I've still got a lot to do before I get to the borders and welcome all the suggestions.
Rita