DIY Printable Cloth

Earlier this year I bought some printable fabric to use in my ink jet printer. I had lofty aspirations of making custom appliques and quilt blocks using my printer and some awesome graphics. But these lofty aspirations = lofty expensive paper. I did a google search and found this tutorial from Dolls and Daydreams. I left out the step of the vinegar soak and simply pressed my printed fabric to set the ink. I haven't tried washing them yet but if I do have problems with disappearing ink then I will try the vinegar. *Update - I did have problems with the ink so I tried the vinegar soak. The ink came out with that too. I did some research and what I was finding is that if an inkjet printer is used, the ink is water soluble. It was recommended to leave the print alone for a week to let the ink fully dry and don't heat set it. We'll see, right?  I omitted the step simply because the instructions on the purchased printable fabric include the heat set. I used a couple of images I found on the internet, the rest of them are of my own vintage postcards that I found a few months ago.


It really was super easy to make these fabric sheets. I rough cut some freezer paper to slightly larger than 8x11. I pressed part of my white cotton sheet and placed the freezer paper on top and pressed the freezer paper, wax side down, over several sections to cover all of it. When it was cool I cut the paper to 8x11 using a regular piece of printer paper as the template. 

This beautiful little girl is from a Russian postcard.

After printing my image to the fabric I peeled the paper from the back and heat set the fabric. Just press for several seconds, changing the position of the iron as needed to cover the entire image. Do not move the iron!! You don't want to accidentally smudge the image.

I am such a sucker for these vintage images.

This cute little war era baby is happy because he has plenty of food.

I love this black and white soap ad from a turn of the century Cosmopolitan magazine.

This old Italian couple is so sweet! I hope to be this in love when I am old and gray too. <3

My whole lot of them.

Be aware! When you start you won't be able to stop. The possibilities are unlimited. And, well, I'm sure you know how quickly the ink runs out of the printer when you get crazy like this.