Vintage Machine Appliqué - Stage 1

First you need to prepare a stencil of your design.  I use ordinary greaseproof paper as tracing paper to trace the design.

Next, using the sewing machine, transfer the design onto a stencil.  I use brown greaseproof paper for the stencil.  Put a thick needle in the machine, an old blunt one is ideal.  Put the tracing on top of the stencil paper and follow the line of the tracing so that the design appears as a line of perforations on the stencil.

The reason I don't use the actual tracing as the stencil is that I don't want to risk transferring traces of pencil onto my work.

The top picture shows the stencil with the dates that appear at the bottom of the wall hanging that I lent to the pub for the Queen's Diamond Jubilee party.  It is pinned into position on top of the purple, which is laid over the cream background.

Then it is time to machine sew through all three layers. 

Stage 2 coming tomorrow...

NB  Note for our transatlantic friends.  For some strange reason you know greaseproof paper as parchment.