Freezer Paper Stencil

Thanks for your encouragement last week regarding my booth display and upcoming shows! I’ve checked quite a bit off my to-do list and keep plugging away. My table cloth for my display is made of simple unbleached muslim yardage and in the center front I had sewn a large piece of charcoal gray felt. On the felt I hand-painted my business name and web address. Unfortunately it was my old business information:

So on Friday, I used my seam ripper to remove the felt piece from the tablecloth and flipped it over to use the other side. This time I just wanted “Welcome!” on it (I’ll have my business name and web address elsewhere in my booth).

I like to use a freezer paper stencil to paint specific shapes on fabric. It’s a great way to add a nice, almost screenprinted looking graphic and for me it is much better than painting words by hand (my handwriting is atrocious).

Here were my steps:

I printed my wordage onto plan computer paper and taped the edges of the print-out to freezer paper. Then I cut along the lines of my letters with an Xacto knife. I saved the centers of letters like the middle of the e’s, o, and l.

In the photo above, I’m about half done with the word.

It took about 15 minutes to do the whole word. Not bad. I wasn’t a perfectionist about it as people won’t be getting their face down and looking closely at this sign as it will about knee high.

I untaped the freezer paper stencil from my print out, making sure I got all the tape off as it would have made a mess of my iron in the next step if I didn’t.

There is something satisfying about seeing the wax on the underside of the paper fix to the fabric.

Finally, the paint. I just grabbed the first can of anything white I could find and it happened to be Kilz primer. Worked just fine. I didn’t add fabric medium or anything. Just painted it on in two coats.