We have all been there. In that moment when the quilt is ready to be quilted, and you have NO clue HOW you want to quilt it. Have you been there ? I know I have ! Sometimes, you get a pattern that gives you suggestions on how to quilt a particular design. Other times, you are left to your own devices.

So we all know the million and one ways there are to actually mark your design onto your actual quilt top. The trouble with that is, you have to know WHAT design you want to mark first !This is my way of figuring out how I may want to quilt a particular block. I know some people will pull out the graph paper, or blank paper and sketch it out, and I have done that in the past myself. The trouble I always had with that though, is scale. If my quilt block is a 16 inch block, and my paper is only 8 inches across, no matter how much I try, the scale is never going to look right. So I came up with a solution !

Shower Paneling !

[ATTACH=CONFIG]489113[/ATTACH]

Did you know that you can get an 8foot by 4 foot piece of basic white shower / bathroom paneling at the hardware store for under $15 ? Did you know that this same very inexpensive paneling also works just like a white board ? Thats right ladies and gentleman, you can use your dry erase markers all over that bad boy ! So this is what I did !

We had bought a sheet of this paneling when we moved into the new apartment to lay on the top of my sewing machine table ( it works fantastic by the way, nice and slippery ! ). So after cutting the piece for the table, we still had some left over. This is one of those pieces ! So.. this is what I do.

First I draw out my quilt block EXACTLY the same size as my actual block ! ( In this example 15 inches )

[ATTACH=CONFIG]489114[/ATTACH]

On the left is my correctly scaled sketch. To the right is my actual quilt block ( that has already been quilted, but just ignore that for now ) . So now I have a visual that is the correct size, and I can go about playing with my dry erase markers to see what I like !

[ATTACH=CONFIG]489115[/ATTACH]

This is actually one of the designs that I used on my current project. It also happens to be the way that I learned how to do feathers that actually LOOK good. There will be a more in depth post about that soon. It is going to blow your mind ! So if you get a chance, try planning out your designs in a way that you can have an exact scale to work with. I think you will find that it makes designing your quilting alot easier and alot more fun !