One of my Mother's favorite quilting design was the baptist fan...she used a piece of thing and a piece of regular chalk...as she finished one line, she would take her thumb and finger and go up on the string to make it shorter and mark the next quilting line...I watched her do this many times...and she would hand quilt quilts for people for $25...working on a quilt frame hung from the ceiling..I have several of her hand quilted quilts...which I treasure...I miss her so much, she lived to be almost 94 and had quilted her whole adult life...