Craft of the Week: Greek Letter Stencils

This week's craft was super simple since I'm at my fiance's house and don't have all of my crafting supplies. I decided to make Greek letter stencils because all it requires is a printer, some cardboard, some scissors, and some paper or fabric. I used paper because 1) I'm not much of a seamstress, so why not practice with pretty paper first? and 2) These aren't sorority letters, they are letters for my honors societies, and very few honors societies actually have members who wear lettered shirts. I love them anyway, so I found a website that lets you design the patterns and backgrounds of the letters before you buy them, chose a white foreground with a black background, print screened the letters I needed, enlarged them to the standard four inches tall, printed them off, and cut them out. This is the first stencil for Sigma Tau Delta, my English honors society.

I used the stencil to trace a sigma on some vintage wrapping paper we found while cleaning out my grandmother's house. No one else wanted it, so I saved it from inevitable recycling. This sheet was a little over four inches tall and the perfect length to make exactly three letters. I thought the sigma outline looked like it almost belonged on the whimsical pattern.
Here's where I deviated from the plan. I actually didn't bring cardboard to East Tennessee, so I traced the full four inch letter onto the paper so that I could keep the stencil intact. What I plan to do when I get home is trace the full stencil on a piece of cardboard, cut off the black outline, and trace the white foreground on another piece of cardboard. That way I have a stencil for a background and foreground. For now, however, I have a large patterned sigma with no background, which I can always change later.
And here's the final letter! That was really easy, right? The hardest part would actually be sewing the letters onto a shirt, I'm sure of it.

In other news, I'm still working on the prayer shawl I mentioned last week. It took me several cast-ons to finally pay attention to my color work, but I eventually realized what I was doing. I also didn't pack a double pointed needle for cabling, so I've been improvising with pencils and bobby pins. Not a great plan since I'm a beginner, but it's been working, albeit slowly. Hopefully progress will pick up when I get home to a variety of knitting supplies.