Creating a Stencil

I am always trying new ways to create stencils for quilting. It is not hard if you want to quilt on dark material. Just trace the design on any paper and use one of those Dritz tracing wheels to poke holes in it along the design. Then I use a Pounce pad with white powder. They do make the powder in blue but one has to be careful as it is sometimes hard to get out to the point that some quilting stores will not even sell it. I found that quilting stores sell plastic sheets and I found this pencil-like thing which will melt the plastic. The manufacturer suggests you work on a pane of glass, which I didn't do but will the next time. They also suggest you practice a lot. If I was using the stencil for painting, of course it would have to be much more accurate. But I just needed a guide for my stitching. I traced my Dresden Plate pattern for the plain white squares as well as the pattern for the dark blue sashing. For the dark blue I could have used paper but I wanted to try this technique. I found that I didn't leave enough solid spaces in the design and it easily broke. I learned to draw my design just how I wanted it cut and not how I wanted it quilted because it was hard to see where you had melted the plastic. I also found I had to make the slots wider to get a lead pencil through for marking the pattern. I found that with the pounce pad I had to sand the plastic after melting because the rough edges caused the pounce pad to fray.