From time to time, I don’t have a stencil that will work for a hand quilting design to highlight the particular beauty of a quilt.  This is when I make my own quilt stencil.  You can do this, too!  It is easier than you think. Use the following pictures and instructions to make your own quilt templates.

Here are the supplies needed to make a hand quilting stencil:

A piece of wood for a cutting board, a photocopy of the quilt pattern, heavy plastic (found at a fabric/craft store or from used notebook covers), a single edge razor like an Exact-O Knife or a box cutter), and…

one or two fine point Sharpies (or permanent markers).

This is a pattern from Nancy Page’s Cutting Pattern Leaf One Quarter found when you click here:  Q Is For Quilter Web Site.  Enlarge or reduce the picture to the design size required for your project.  Use a light box or a window when holding the copied pattern to your quilt project to make sure the alignment  works the way you want it to look on the quilt.

 

Place the heavy plastic over the quilt design and trace along the lines with the Sharpie pen.

 Remove the master copy underneath and use the single edge razor to cut a space in the plastic to mark the lines you will be quilting.

Place the finished template on the quilt and use a tracing pencil or a colored pencil to mark the quilt.

For this stencil, I did not cut for the seam line of the plastic Leaf Pattern, because I will use the seam of each fabric leaf as a guide to align the stencil in place.  As you can see from the picture above, I only marked every other line when I traced this pattern to create a variety of quilting designs on each of the leaves in the quilt.

This Is The Quilting Stencil I’m Working on Now:

If I can do this, I know you can do this, too!

Have a good day!

~Molly