Vintage Stencil Signage Tutorial – Art with Mrs. Tucker

I inherited these great vintage yellow stencils from my husband’s grandmother. We helped her clean out her house and while everyone went for the china and furniture I went for the real treasures!! Sewing notions, broken watches, old letters, vintage sheets, hankies and linens with a story. That’s more my style, I love things with a history. Anyway, back to the stencils. They are a great mustard color and sturdy card stock. You can find something similar here.* Here’s what you’ll need to make your own sign:

3 inch tall card stock alphabet stencils
1 fat quarter of your favorite fabric
Spray adhesive
Sewing machine with colored thread
Thick yarn (I used Wool Ease Thick and Quick)
Glue gun

First, flip the stencils over to the “wrong side” and give them a good coating of spray adhesive. I recommend doing this outside, but since it was a rainy day I decided to make a tent out of an old bag to catch the excess spray. Take my word for it after lots of countertop scrubbing, you don’t want to skip this step!

Next, press your coated stencil on to the “right side” of your fabric and cut off the excess fabric. Repeat this step with each letter you plan to use for your sign and set them aside to dry.

Once the stencils are dry (wait for this because nobody wants spray adhesive gunk in their sewing machine) you can do a zig-zag stitch all the way around the edge of your stencil. Be sure that you don’t pick up your needle as you turn the corners so that you don’t have excess fringe on the corners. What you’ll want to do is keep your needle down as you approach the corner, lift your presser foot, turn the stencil, then put your presser foot down and sew down the next side until you’re done.

You’re almost done! Finally, you’ll want to place all of your finished stencils down from right to left and hot glue some yarn to the top of each stencil, leaving about 4 inches of yarn on each end for hanging.