Printing on fabric

I've been gathering a lot of ideas I want to start working on, and one of the techniques I wanted to be able to use was to print images from my computer onto fabrics.

There is a commercial product available to make iron-on transfers that can be printed from your computer, but it is not the most cost-effective means, and it leaves a shiny finish that wasn't what I was looking for. There are many low-cost alternatives from items you may already have at home.

Basically, the only reason you can't just put fabric into your printer is that it doesn't have enough body for the machine to handle it. If you support the fabric to the strength of heavy paper so that the machine can handle it, it feeds through with no problems.

You can use a piece of cardstock and apply your fabric with a repositionable adhesive and feed it through your printer. If your fabric needs to be larger than your printer can handle (mine will only do up to about 9" wide) you can just wrap the fabric around the back of the cardstock, as long as the printed area doesn't fall outside of the printer capabilities. Be sure to use adhesive on the back as well so there is nothing loose to catch inside your printer. And make sure the leading edge is sharp and clean so the printer can pick it up. Alternatively, if you don't need to remove the fabric but want to perhaps frame it, you can use a permanent adhesive and just leave it attached to the cardstock.

You can also use waxed paper, and simply iron the paper onto the back side of your fabric. You may get the best results by cutting both the wax paper and the fabric slightly larger than the sheet your printer can handle, fusing them two together, and then cutting it down to size. It is important with most printers that the top edge be straight, and for best results you will want all the sides to be straight and the corners square, as some printers will jam if they are not. After printing, you can simply peel the waxed paper from your fabric.

Inkjet printers are not colorfast for washing, except for special inks/models. You should pre-wash your fabrics to remove any sizing in order to get the best and most durable printing. If the item needs to be washed, you should apply a thin coat of sealer. This can be tricky and results may be mixed, so if you really want something washable, test a small project first.

The lack of colorfastness can be an advantage in some situations ... say you want to transfer a pattern to fabric but you don't want permanent lines. However, if the piece is something you just want to display, or handle gently, the inks will usually adhere well enough to last for years. And if you want more vivid colors, you can use fabric paints to go over your images (or parts of them).

I'm interested to see projects readers may come up with using printer images on fabric. This is a great technique to use in transferring quotes or photos to fabric. We will be posting some of our projects over the next few weeks.