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Designing Your Stencil

Designing Your Stencil

by John Marshall

Designing Your Stencil

There  are five basic styles of stencils classified according to how a design  is depicted – silhouette, reverse silhouette, and so on. The styles of  design may be used individually or in combination to create movement and  drama.

The  first style is the familiar silhouette. Keep in mind that the paste  will resist color in the cut-out areas. What you see in the stencil is  exactly what you will be getting in the finished dyed piece – a colored  design where the paper remains and a blank background where the paper  has been cut away.

Designing Your Stencil

The  reverse silhouette is the second style, in which the motif has been cut away and the background left intact. This yields a blank pattern on a colored background.


The next two styles are outlines in which the line is cut away from the  paper or, alternatively, everything but the outline is cut away. Notice that the cut-out outline requires tiny breaks in the line. These are  called bridges. Bridges serve a very important function in all stencils –  they help hold the elements of the design together until the paper can be lacquered. Bridges may remain as part of the design or be removed during the lacquering process.

Designing Your Stencil

The  fifth style suggests the motif indirectly, through a grouping of  punched-out dots or with long narrow slashes that have been cut away to  create the impression of looking through a net or bamboo screen.

Designing Your Stencil

Most  stencils employ more than one technique. Notice how much the silhouette and reverse silhouette designs are enhanced by combining them with the outline styles as in the last example to the right. Many employ elements  of all five approaches, but in each case, it is the cut-away section that allows the paste to flow through the stencil and adhere to the  cloth, leaving everything except the pasted area vulnerable to the dye.  In addition, every stencil requires a border of 1-1/2" to 3" in width. The border secures the design, provides the dyer with a convenient  ‘handle’ when working with the stencil, and keeps the excess paste from  flowing off the edges as the resist is spread across the surface of the motif.

Yardage  used in making traditional women's kimono in Japan averages about  fourteen inches in width. With that in mind, it is not surprising that  most traditional stencils are about fourteen inches wide as well.

Designing Your Stencil