Marking a top for quilting
 

I was just wondering if you should mark your quilting designs on your top before you basted it together for hand quilting.
It is quite a large quilt and I have never hand quilted a quilt before so I am rather intimidated.
I plan on using a hoop to quilt it.

Yes I draw my quilt designs on before sandwiching the quilt. It is easier to get accurate lines with just the top layer of fabric instead of the softness of the batting behind your markings.

I learned to piece and quilt in the late '70s. I took an adult education class at our local high school that was taught by a very strict woman who believed in doing things the "right" way. She taught us to take a piece of freezer paper and draw the design in heavy black marker. Then we took the freezer paper and placed it under the quilt top and traced lightly with a no. 2 pencil. It worked very well and I still do it this way.
All our fabrics had to be prewashed and dried. And when the quilt was completed it went back into the washer again. I must say all the pencil marks came out.

I have just come back to quilting after all these years and I realize that things just are not done this way anymore.
The woman who owns a local quilt shop often raises her eyebrows at me :)

I mark my quilt top after the layers are basted together. to thimblebug6000s point, there is some bulkiness doing it this way. I always tell my self that I am going to mark the next one before I sandwich.. but then I always forget :)

I've done both methods. Since it typically takes me a while to hand quilt particularly a bed-sized quilt, I find that in many cases the markings rub off over time with all the moving and shifting of the quilt during the quilting process. So for the most part I now mark my designs as I go which means I am doing it after it is sandwiched. I use a #2 mechanical pencil for light fabrics and a white Bohin mechanical pencil for dark fabrics. Don't normally have issues with either of these tools washing out after completion.

ALWAYS test your marking instrument on a piece of scrap fabric from the quilt. Most of the times the marking will vanish and sometimes they DON'T if you USE COLOR CHALK!!

Been there, DONE THAT!!