Just Another Hang Up: Part Two - Printing on Fabric

Monday, October 04, 2010

Part Two - Printing on Fabric

Last week I published a post that showed a pillow I made and how to print on fabric using your home printer. Today I made an item using another method of printing on fabric. This time I used a technique that is washable. I did so because the item I made is a kitchen dishtowel that would need to be washed.

I began the process by going to The Graphics Fairy and falling in love with a beautiful, autumn-like, vintage image...

I downloaded the image onto my computer and began the real work. Because the dishtowel needed to be washable, I chose to use a "print and iron-on" method. I bought these iron-on transfer sheets at Hobby Lobby for $5.99. That's $2 a sheet which is, in my opinion, is a bit pricey. Still, I wanted to try out the method, so I grabbed the sheets and nicely pitched the big bucks to the cashier.

To use an iron-on transfer, one must make a mirror image of the picture you plan to use -- especially if your image has writing on it. I use Picasa3 as my photo editor. To make a mirror image in Picasa3, hold down the Ctrl + Shift keys and then strike the "H" key. Unfortunately, Picasa3 would not allow me to save the mirrored image until I edited the picture further by cropping it or enhancing the color. After the picture was further edited, I could then save the mirrored image in that form. Go figure.

Here's the image that I originally saved in Picasa3...

And here's the cropped mirror image...

Then bring up a new Word Document and insert the saved mirror image into the document. Size the image to the desired shape and size, then print the image onto a transfer sheet using your home printer. I set my Print Quality to "best" and let 'er rip! Lickity-split you have a mirror image on your transfer sheet. At this point all you have to do is put the sheet face-side-down on your fabric and iron it on. Peal off the transfer backing sheet and here's what you have...

As I said before, I chose to make a dishtowel with this image. I used my favorite muslin as my fabric of choice, made a few pleats and hemmed the edges...