Today's crafting adventure is...
Fabric labels.
Well, OK, these have actually been a week long crafting adventure, but I finally made an acceptable set of labels today. I've been looking at them for a while on etsy, where they're offered by various sellers, but I did swear to myself that I should be able to make them, thereby preventing me from buying any. I also want my labels to be small and thin, meaning that a lot of what's out there isn't suitable for my purposes. There are a few tutorials out there about using an inkjet printer on cotton fabric and full sheet adhesive labels, but I wanted to use silk (mostly because I can't seem to find a cotton with a high enough thread count). I found one note by someone who used a laser printer on silk. Unfortunately there was no comment on fraying or washfastness, so I had to sort of wing that part.
PRINTING YOUR OWN FABRIC (SILK) LABELS
MATERIALS:
Silk (I used both 8 mm habutae and some sort of leftover twill silk that was significantly thicker)
Disposable palette paper (I used this one from Curry's)
Iron
Laser Printer
Acrylic Gloss Top Coat (again, from Curry's)
1) Cut the palette paper to 8.5 x 11 so that it will fit into your printer. I experimented with wax paper and with adhesive labels. To my disappointment, I discovered that wax paper doesn't actually stick when you iron it to fabric. The adhesive labels, while fine for cotton, bonded with the silk after going through the laser printer and were a waste of time.
2) Cut your fabric to 9 x 12 so that when you iron it to the palette paper the plastic from the paper does not ruin your iron.
3) Iron paper to fabric on the hottest setting possible. DO NOT USE STEAM. Trim fabric to the same size as paper.
4) Design your logo and text for your labels. My labels were 7/8 of an inch high and 2 inches wide. Fill up a sheet with these. I think I fit 48 of them on one 8.5 x 11 sheet.
5) Print the design on your fabric/palette paper. Make sure that you are printing on the side with the fabric.
After all of that, it should look like this:
6) Rip sheet off of palette paper. This can be fun.
7) Soak labels in acrylic finish solution. I used a mixture of maybe half a teaspoon of the Gloss to three cups of water. Could probably use a more concentrated solution. The idea here is to help fix the laser toner to the fabric and to hopefully retard fraying. Plus of using habutae? It dries super fast with a hair dryer.
8) Cut labels. You could do this before step 7, but I preferred the ease of handling one sheet of fabric as opposed to fifty tiny little labels. Up to you really.
9) Sew your labels on.
I think I like the habutae better, especially since it seems to produce deeper and brighter colour. I'm not sure if this is a function of the weave or some interaction of the thinner fabric with the paper and the laser toner. Down side is that habutae does fray more.
Well, OK, these have actually been a week long crafting adventure, but I finally made an acceptable set of labels today. I've been looking at them for a while on etsy, where they're offered by various sellers, but I did swear to myself that I should be able to make them, thereby preventing me from buying any. I also want my labels to be small and thin, meaning that a lot of what's out there isn't suitable for my purposes. There are a few tutorials out there about using an inkjet printer on cotton fabric and full sheet adhesive labels, but I wanted to use silk (mostly because I can't seem to find a cotton with a high enough thread count). I found one note by someone who used a laser printer on silk. Unfortunately there was no comment on fraying or washfastness, so I had to sort of wing that part.
PRINTING YOUR OWN FABRIC (SILK) LABELS
MATERIALS:
Silk (I used both 8 mm habutae and some sort of leftover twill silk that was significantly thicker)
Disposable palette paper (I used this one from Curry's)
Iron
Laser Printer
Acrylic Gloss Top Coat (again, from Curry's)
1) Cut the palette paper to 8.5 x 11 so that it will fit into your printer. I experimented with wax paper and with adhesive labels. To my disappointment, I discovered that wax paper doesn't actually stick when you iron it to fabric. The adhesive labels, while fine for cotton, bonded with the silk after going through the laser printer and were a waste of time.
2) Cut your fabric to 9 x 12 so that when you iron it to the palette paper the plastic from the paper does not ruin your iron.
3) Iron paper to fabric on the hottest setting possible. DO NOT USE STEAM. Trim fabric to the same size as paper.
4) Design your logo and text for your labels. My labels were 7/8 of an inch high and 2 inches wide. Fill up a sheet with these. I think I fit 48 of them on one 8.5 x 11 sheet.
5) Print the design on your fabric/palette paper. Make sure that you are printing on the side with the fabric.
After all of that, it should look like this:
6) Rip sheet off of palette paper. This can be fun.
7) Soak labels in acrylic finish solution. I used a mixture of maybe half a teaspoon of the Gloss to three cups of water. Could probably use a more concentrated solution. The idea here is to help fix the laser toner to the fabric and to hopefully retard fraying. Plus of using habutae? It dries super fast with a hair dryer.
8) Cut labels. You could do this before step 7, but I preferred the ease of handling one sheet of fabric as opposed to fifty tiny little labels. Up to you really.
9) Sew your labels on.
I think I like the habutae better, especially since it seems to produce deeper and brighter colour. I'm not sure if this is a function of the weave or some interaction of the thinner fabric with the paper and the laser toner. Down side is that habutae does fray more.