Stained Glass Craft · True-to-Scale Printing
Print Stained Glass & Mosaic Panel Patterns at 100% Actual Size
The one thing that ruins a stained glass project is a scaled printout. A 1% deviation means your cut glass won't fit the came or foil frame. TileStencil runs locally in your browser, tiling your pattern (cartoon) across multiple pages at true centimeter/inch dimensions — complete with overlap zones and cross-hair registration marks — so any home A4/Letter printer can output precise, oversized patterns. No image ever leaves your device.
Why a Normal Printout Ruins the Glass
Home printers default to "fit to page" scaling — the pattern still looks complete, but the real dimensions have quietly shifted. Glass is unforgiving: cut it a millimeter off and the piece is scrap, and in a complex mosaic with dozens of interlocking pieces, that scaling error compounds across every cut.
- Disable your browser/printer's auto-scale — TileStencil forces true physical output (100% / Actual Size)
- Toggle between centimeters and inches to match metric or imperial rulers and printers
- The full pattern is auto-tiled across multiple A4/Letter sheets and stays exactly to scale after assembly
High-Contrast Black & White Lines, Low Ink Usage
A stained glass pattern is ultimately traced through a light table or directly onto the glass, so lines must be sharp black-on-white with no gray noise — otherwise you can't see the cut path on the glass surface.
- One-click conversion to high-contrast black-and-white line art, stripping background color and shading
- Ink-saving mode so large multi-page patterns won't run your cartridge dry
- Adjustable line thickness for oil-pen tracing or direct through-glass copying
Overlap Zones + Cross-Hair Marks Keep the Tiling Accurate
The biggest risk in multi-page tiling is misaligned or skewed assembly. TileStencil automatically prints a visible overlap margin and cross-hair registration marks on every page edge — cut and tape along the crosshairs and the full pattern lines up perfectly.
- Every page includes an overlap margin, giving you slack for accurate tape alignment
- Cross-hair marks pinpoint exact page boundaries — trim the excess and the pieces snap together
- Preview the fully assembled pattern before printing to confirm there's zero distortion
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
How do I know the printout is really at 100% actual size?
TileStencil prints a calibration ruler with centimeter/inch markings on every page. After printing, measure that ruler with a physical ruler — if the length matches exactly, no scaling was applied and the pattern is true physical size. If it's off, check your print dialog: make sure "Fit to page" or "Scale to printable area" is unchecked, and select "Actual Size / 100% / No Scaling" instead.
The pages don't line up after tiling — what am I doing wrong?
TileStencil automatically adds a fixed-width overlap margin (adjustable in settings) and prints cross-hair marks on each page. Trim off the excess white border at the outer cross-hairs, keep the overlap area, and use the cross-hairs inside that overlap as your alignment reference when taping pages together — rather than butting the raw paper edges together. This absorbs the small margin of error from printing and cutting.
Do I need to convert my pattern to black and white first? Does it work with photos?
No manual conversion needed — TileStencil includes a built-in high-contrast black-and-white converter that automatically detects line work and strips out background color, gradients, and shadows, even from a hand-drawn photo or scan. If your original lines are thin or low-contrast, raise the contrast threshold in settings to avoid losing fine detail at corners and tight curves.