Making Templates

I have a favorite template. You can see it in a lot of the plates that I post.

Since it’s a favorite, I need to have it in more than one size. I started out making a smaller shape for a tiny bowl. I started with a cutout like you see above and folded it in half where the design met up and then in half again – you can see how simple this design shape really is

Then, I simply cut off about 3/4 of an inch keeping with the design. It could be drawn first but I just cut away.

Making it bigger takes a little more effort and there are 2 methods. The first is one that never really works well for me but I know others might have success with it. Sometimes it depends on the shapes you are copying. I lay out the pattern and trace around it then using a compass, draw a line out. This wasn’t big enough so I drew one more time. You can see the design got distorted.

To fix that, I drew lines straight out from the major design points and then re-sketched my design so I could have more crisp hills. Then I cut around the piece leaving a little bit around the edges. I just needed to be able to match it all up.

I folded just like I did with the first piece and in cutting I cleaned up any non-symmetrical issues.

For my final even bigger template, I folded a large piece of paper into quarters like I did with this one, Then traced the design on there, marked my points of interest, measured out the increasing distance on those points and drew my shape. It was easier because I only had to draw one quarter of the final plate template.

Voila! I have 4 different sizes of matching plates/bowls now.

Soon I’ll show you what I’ve been making from each of these sizes…. that is if you haven’t already sneaked a peek from my Instagram.