Tracing paper quilting

[Bonnie in Ok]

For all those who use tracing paper for designs to sew on a quilt with a long arm how do you hold it in place till you are done sewing the design?

[LisaC]

Bonnie, I used the Golden Threads paper for quilting some pretty intricate pine cone boughs and I just used straight pins to hold it in place. Of course, they want to rip the paper a bit, but they stayed down until I was finished. It was not my preferred method since I had a lot of shards of paper to pull off, but I couldn't mark the quilt nor could I have free handed it and have it come out perfectly in all the spaces. You can put a piece of scotch tape where you plan to pin it down to avoid the tears. The open toe foot did catch on loose ends so use a closed foot for better results.

 

Pine Cone boughs by Lisa C., on Flickr

[Sunny Quilter]

Creative, I like it.

[JBQuilts]

Lisa, Did you trace all of those designs yourself, and if so, from what?

[Bonnie in Ok]

Thanks Lisa C. That is why I wanted to do it too. Good idea about the tape where you pin it. Did you use pencil or marker to mark your paper?

[LisaC]

I created the design using a combination of a quilting stencil and a painting stencil. Once I came up with a design I could continuously quilt I traced it onto several sections of the Golden Threads paper using a black fine tip Sharpie marker. I also traced an extra set for future reference. I created one longer and one shorter stencil so they lapped into each other and were not symmetrical, if that makes sense.

[mamu]

how do you get all of the bits of paper off? so that there isn't any little bits in the stitching

[LisaC]

The Golden Threads paper is very brittle so it basically falls off; I vacuumed the big pieces and the small pieces I wiped off with a dust cloth. This paper does not get stuck under the stitches like other paper - for example paper piecing paper. I really like it. If you look closely at the picture; you can see where I have stitched it cuts right through the paper.