Behind the seams | stencil cutting

 Having cut around twenty stencils now... ok lets list them off the top of my head ... Alabama Chanin style

• small polka dots
• medium polka dots
• large polka dots
• daisy
• Angies fall
• fern placement
• whispering rose (my version / not yet made available as an open source by the Alabama Chanin company)
• pansy (my version / not yet made available as an open source by the Alabama Chanin company)
• tartan
• checkers
• zero
• new leaves
• magdelena
• large paradise
• anna's garden
• bloomers
• june's spring
• daisy
• figures (my version / not yet made available as an open source by the Alabama Chanin company)
• medallion
• facets
• kristina's rose
• star
• climbing daisy

ok I have a few things to say about cutting stencils...

You don't need special tools.  The stencil material will get dirty.  Alabama Chanin's stencil designs, are to me, by far the best.  I'd rather not cut stencils; I'd rather buy them but when they're not very pretty generally, I need to go back to the Alabama Chanin company, who has made such a beautiful art out of it.

Anyway,

• Stencil material can be fixed easily with sticky tape and extra stencil material.  Even sticky tape will work.  It's just a mask.
• Treat stencils with enough care so that they don't come close to falling apart, but know that it's really just a step for your final piece.  It's not worth trying to put too much love into the stencil.  It's purpose is to serve the final product
• The more durable the stencil material, the harder it is to cut by hand, generally.
• I've tried all sorts of stencil materials (in fact, you can just use anything at all that acts like a mask), but there's a reason why mylar is such a commonly used medium on products you find all over the place.  You don't need mylar per se; another common search term is polypropylene.  In other words, if you find tab dividers in an office store, they are probably made of polypropylene.  It should be tear resistant.  The one I buy advertises itself as tear resistant.  It's basically a plastic.  Plastic obviously comes in different thicknesses.  You need it to be between 3-5mil (the metric units is called um, with the funny u) to have enough strength for stability but not be hard to cut.  Many professional products for home use will be around 5mil.  It's definitely enough.
• Stiffened felt is another good medium for stencils, but I found them very difficult to cut.  Probably the only one available to me was too thick.  But the one thing I really liked about stiffened felt is that it absorbs the paint as you airbrush - so you don't have excess wetness while doing a messy job.
• You can piece your stencil medium together if you can't buy big massive pieces.  It's cheap as chips to buy from office suppliers in the commonly bought size (A4).  When you want whole pieces you need to search for a special supplier and the price just skyrockets.  You can piece the pieces together using a good quality packing tape.  Everything gets fast with repetition and practice.  Everything is slow at the start.
• My most useful tools are a Stanley knife type thing (just a generic $5 one from a hardware store) that has multiple blades you and snap off to get a new sharp edge.  It needs to be sturdy so that the blades do not move or wiggle as you cut your lines.  A flimsy one will drive you nuts.  But for around $5 from a manly-type-store you'll get a really, really decent one that has who knows 50x blades for you to use.  Brilliant.  Use a sharp edge - it makes your life a lot easier.   The other useful tool is a heat knife.  Sometimes they advertise this as wood cutter with lots of extra fittings.  You just need a pointed tip that will melt your lines.
• Heated tip VS sharp blade is for different stencils.  Treat every stencil design differently.  Find the smartest way to do it.  For designs like Kristina's Rose or Whispering Rose where the shapes are just all over the shop, thin, irregular, the heat tip wins.  For Large Polka Dot, the sharp blade wins.  The sharp blade produces cleaner edges and is actually faster (going with the polypropylene I was talking about earlier).  I had to use the sharp knife for Tartan and Checkers... using the heat tip just created tiny circular shapes by accident that I did not want.  When the stencil is kind of an organic theme (such as flowers or leaves) then there's no problem to make odd mistakes with the heat tip.  When it's geometrical (like circles, squares) then you don't want melted mistakes all over, which does happen regularly with the heat tip.
• The thing about using the sharp blade is that it applies pressure.  The thing about the heat tip is time management regarding heating.
• To reiterate : every stencil is different, so be smart differently in every stencil cutting!
• Stencil cutting is actually kind of fun.  When you want a 'fast' finished product, it sure is a whole lot faster than making an Alabama Chanin garment. You can be done in hours, as opposed to weeks/months.
• When using geometrical stencils that are where the spacing/angles matter, then the bigger the stencil the better.  Placement on the garment becomes easier.  I mean, this is not always all that possible.  I still cut a 4xA4 stencil for Checkers and Tartan.  They are just monsters to cut.

I have definitely not used all the stencils I cut.  I was so sure I would use one then changed my mind, etc.  But it's always good to have them sitting there ready to whip out and experiment.