printing on fabric

[Lorchen]

Just wanted to let you guys know that you can print on fabric (for labels and such) *without* freezer paper if you have to! I've just done 3 labels on fabric, with my inkjet printer, by taping the fabric to regular paper. It prints fine, gets a little hung up coming out, but not during the printing.

for placement, as I was using strips and not full 8x11 sheets, I printed fast draft quality on the paper first, then placed my strip centered over that, taped it down top & bottom, and resent that same piece of paper through the printer. As long as you are careful with which way your paper feeds, this works great!

I made the labels in Word, inserting appropriate clip art as desired, and printed on strips/scraps leftover from the projects in question. Yippee!!! Will get those fused/appliqued/attached asap. Just thought others might benefit from this info as well.

[rehak]

I do this all the time and have never had any problem with it getting stuck anywhere in the printer. I always draw an X on the edge of the paper as it sits in the tray before doing the initial fast draft so there's no thinking about how to put the sheet back in after taping on the fabric. I generally use commercial printer fabric so it has the stiff backing on it and put it through this way so I can just use the size that I need of the expensive printer fabric. But I've also done this with regular fabric. You have to be more careful about how you tape on the regular fabric since it doesn't have that stiff backing.

Nancy

[rehak]

I do this all the time and have never had any problem with it getting stuck anywhere in the printer. I always draw an X on the edge of the paper as it sits in the tray before doing the initial fast draft so there's no thinking about how to put the sheet back in after taping on the fabric. I generally use commercial printer fabric so it has the stiff backing on it and put it through this way so I can just use the size that I need of the expensive printer fabric. But I've also done this with regular fabric. You have to be more careful about how you tape on the regular fabric since it doesn't have that stiff backing.

Nancy

yep, this was regular fabric, not the commercial "print on" fabric. It worked well though I taped down each corner of the fabric and I think it was more the tape that got stuck a bit, not the fabric, as it went all the way through for printing....

smart move to put the x on the edge of the paper!

[theothermarion]

My newer printer is finicky about this, but the older printer works fine. Of course, both (being over two years old) are now obsolete...

[theothermarion]

I've used double sided tape to hold down the fabric before now which worked well.

Just be sure to make certain that your printer ink doesn't run when it gets wet or if it does you need to use a mordant to set the dyes in it (Epson Durabrite inks don't run after 24hrs, compatibles do unless the fabric is pretreated with Bubblejet 2000 as the mordant - don't know about other makes of printer inks)

[theothermarion]

I've used double sided tape to hold down the fabric before now which worked well.

Just be sure to make certain that your printer ink doesn't run when it gets wet or if it does you need to use a mordant to set the dyes in it (Epson Durabrite inks don't run after 24hrs, compatibles do unless the fabric is pretreated with Bubblejet 2000 as the mordant - don't know about other makes of printer inks)

Oh, that's good to know! I printed before on commercial "print on fabric" fabric, but I guess that is pretreated.....when I *did* print on that and do the "set in water and let the excess ink run off" none did, and many washes later hasn't faded, ran, etc. BUT I will test the ones I did today and see, before I wash them. thanks for the reminder!