Short answer: use the "poster" (tiling) setting in Adobe Acrobat or the free Acrobat Reader. Set the tile scale to the size you want, and Acrobat splits the enlarged template across several letter sheets that you tape back together. Then check the printout against a ruler before you cut clay.
That is the whole trick. Below is the longer version, plus the two things that quietly go wrong if nobody warns you about them.
Why you would scale a template in the first place
A template is a proportion, not a fixed size. The same slab pattern that gives you an espresso cup will give you a tumbler at 130 percent and a proper mug at 160 percent. Scaling is how you turn one template into a whole family of forms without redrawing anything. It is also how you adapt to your own hands, your shrinkage rate, and the mood of the day.
Because the FromFran templates are drawn as vectors, they stay razor sharp no matter how far you push them. Scaling up will not blur or pixelate the lines the way an enlarged photo would.
The one concept that makes this easy: tiling
A letter page is 8.5 by 11 inches. Scale it to 200 percent and the artwork becomes 17 by 22 inches, which is far bigger than any sheet your home printer can hold. Tiling solves this by cutting the enlarged page into letter-size pieces, printing each one, and letting you assemble them like a small paper puzzle. Acrobat does the math and shows you the finished grid before you print a single page.
Step by step
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Open your template PDF in Acrobat or the free Acrobat Reader, then choose File, then Print.
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Under "Page sizing and handling," choose Poster. The preview will immediately break the page into letter-size tiles.
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In the Tile scale field, type the percentage you want. 200 doubles every dimension. Click into the Overlap field afterward so the preview redraws at your new scale.
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Set an overlap of about 0.25 to 0.5 inch. This prints a little duplicated information at each seam so the pieces line up cleanly when you tape them.
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Turn on Cut marks and Labels. Cut marks give you trim guides at the corners, and labels number each tile by row and column so reassembly is obvious.
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Confirm your paper size is Letter and that no separate "fit to page" or "shrink oversized pages" option is switched on, since that would quietly cancel your scaling.
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Print, tape the tiles together along the overlaps, and trim.
The part most guides skip: check it with a ruler
This matters more for potters than for almost anyone else, because your template is a measuring tool. Before you commit, measure a known feature on the printout and confirm it came out at exactly the scale you asked for. Some printers sneak in their own "fit" scaling and hand you something that looks right but is off by a few percent. A few percent across a whole vessel is the difference between a lid that fits and one that does not.
The cleanest habit is to add a one inch reference line to your file, or measure any dimension you already know, and hold a ruler to the paper. If it reads true, cut clay. If it does not, the printer is scaling behind your back.
The other quiet trap: white margins
If your original page has a lot of empty space around the artwork, scaling multiplies that empty space too, and you end up printing near blank sheets and wasting paper. Cropping the PDF down to just the template before you tile keeps the sheet count tight and honest.
No Acrobat? No problem
The free Acrobat Reader has the exact same Poster mode, so you do not need the paid version. Many printer drivers also have their own "poster" or "tile" setting hiding under Properties. And PosteRazor, a free desktop app, will tile an image or PDF just as well if you prefer.
FAQ
Will scaling up ruin the quality of my template? No. The templates are vector art, so the lines stay crisp at any size. This only becomes an issue with photographs or scanned images.
How many sheets will a 200 percent template need? Usually around a 2 by 2 grid of letter pages, though printer margins and your overlap setting can push it to a few more. The Acrobat preview always shows the exact count before you print.
Can I do this on my phone? Tiling really wants a desktop print dialog. If you only have a phone, the simplest path is to email the PDF to yourself and print from a computer, or ask a print shop to scale it for you.
Can I go smaller too? Yes. Set the tile scale below 100 percent to shrink a template, though most people scale up. Everything else in the process is the same.
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