Since I bought my new gadget, The Silhouette Portrait, I have been in the stencil-making mode. Here is my new design on fabric.
Close up
In this post I’m going to take you through my process from a photograph to my finished stenciled fabric.
A couple years ago, my friend Amy and I took a day and drove over to French Lick, Indiana to enjoy the Fall weather and to take some pictures. I just loved this stone wall.
French Lick stone wall
I thought it might make an interesting stencil so the other evening I got out my sketchbook and sketched part of this wall.
My sketch of stone wall
The more I looked at this, the more I realized I liked this wall because it looked like African art which I love. With my Ipad next to me and using Paper, I changed the drawing a bit.
Ipad drawing of stone wall
Yes, that was looking much more like I wanted it to even though it really doesn’t look like that stone wall anymore! I have to stop right now and tell you something. Years ago when I was under a different administration (marriage), I found a picture of a beautiful denim quilt with a large dog draped on top of it and took the picture to my then hubster. “This is what I’m going to make for our bed.” He thought it was beautiful – a patchwork of old jeans which we had plenty of.
Well, I started working on it and before I knew, I was at the fabric store buying some red denim and white denim with red and blue stripes. I thought I’d just add a little spice – my little (or really large) change to this project. So when I was half done with the top, I showed him. I was pretty proud of it, even though it looked nothing like the picture. He took one look at it and started laughing and said, “It looks like a d*** flag!” I left the room and threw away the top. End of me making any quilts for that bed.
Since then I’ve realized that what I did is part of the artistic process. I don’t want to replicate what I see. I want it to be mine. Anyway, on with this stencil making process.
So now to take this design into the Silhouette Studio software and clean it up, round off the corners.
Drawing in Silhouette Studio Software
Then to cut it.
stone wall stencil
On the left side is the stencil, on the right cardstock cut out. I like to cut out with cardstock first to make sure my stencil works. Now to playing with it!
I took one of those pieces I made in that soy wax class.
First stone stencil fabric piece
That was neat, but I wanted more. So I went back into the Portrait and played with the design and came up with this stencil. I wasn’t sure if I’d like it so I just cut it out of cardstock and used it. I’ll be cutting a regular stencil of it for sure.
New stone wall stencil
Then I used it on fabric from my low immersion dye post.
stone wall stencil fabric
I can see this pattern repeating. Unfortunately, I ran out of fabric to continue the design.
And a close up:
Close up
To be inspired and see what other fiber artists are creating, check out Nina Marie’s Off The Wall Friday Link up. I’m off there right now to get my dose of inspiration.
