Things Worth Doing and How To Do Them

by Lina Beard; Adelia B. Beard

Make Your Stencil

if you have no especial ideas of your own to carry out, will be to select a graceful embroidery pattern or one intended for decorative painting and adapt it to your use. With a little practice this becomes quite easy. The principal things to remember are that a good stencil design should be simple, bold and conventional; the unbroken lines must not be too long nor the spaces to be cut out too narrow, between the cut-out parts there must be space wide enough to hold firmly. It is also necessary to break the lines once in a while with little bridges.

Fig. 633.—Design for outline embroidery.

Suppose we take the pattern ([Fig. 633]). To make it into

A Design for Stencilling

we must cut off connections and separate it into many parts, at the same time keeping the effect of the long curves. Beginning with the flower we will separate the petals and calyx (A, [Fig. 633], and A, [Fig. 634]), and widen the stem (B, [Fig. 633], and B, [Fig. 634]). Instead of continuing the curve we will break it at C and D, with two little bridges. This divides the stem into three parts, and, to give variety and interest to an otherwise monotonous line, we will widen the first and second parts of the stem at the lower ends, curving the wide end inward and rounding the end of the next section to give the idea of its fitting the joint. The suggestion of the various parts fitting together in stencil designing is the means of carrying the eye over necessary bridges or intervening spaces and conveying the impression of continuous lines. The third section of the stem, where it disappears under the flower in [Fig. 633], we will bring to a point in [Fig. 634] to indicate its vanishing behind the flower. The buds which fill in the curve of this stem in [Fig. 633] we will leave out altogether, for they would crowd the design. We will conventionalize the leaves, dispense with the small stems, broaden the main leaf stem, separate it from the flower stem and curve each end, one to fit the base of the end leaf, the other to follow the curve of the flower stem.