I have tea towels for drying dishes and tea towels that are there to look good. 
These are in the latter category and although they will survive my washing machine (because they were stencilled using acrylic paint), they will not be in it until the holiday is over. I asked Chips to design a bauble stencil for me with yards of twisty ribbon. He refused. What I did get was a lovely bauble stencil, but I have to put in some work to make the lengths of ribbon. I'll show you how.
Because this stencil is made from separate components, I had a practice run on some paper so that I could see how the ribbon might attach to the bow which in turn attached to the bauble. 
When I was happy with the workings of the design it was time to create the tea towels. After laundering this pair of linen towels, I adhered them to my work surface with a light spraying of repositioning adhesive. This stops the fabric shifting when working with the stencils. Before positioning the design I stencilled each bauble onto blank stencil film (card or paper would suffice). 
This was to make guards so that I could mask one bauble from another and add dimension to the pattern. 
Here I am showing the guard being used to chop the ribbon at the desired place and angle.
I also use the mask to make one bauble appear to hide behind another. 
Stencil the forward one and then place the mask over it, postion the rear bauble and stencil it. 
The mask will keep the two elements of design separate.
Now for the ribbon. By turning the stencil, one can extend the twirling ribbon easily, but I wanted a long straight piece. This was achieved by placing three long strips of thin tape alongside each other. 
I removed the middle strip of tape and stencilled between the two outer pieces. 
I stencilled one of the tea towels with a Christmas greeting and the other with the snowflake stencil. 
This was to match the dinner mats that I had made. Coasters were made with the bauble design so the whole stencilled kitchen ensemble worked together. H.
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