Monday, January 16, 2012

Printable on a Pillow!

I've been looking for fabric to make an accent pillow for my front room.  I wanted something that would tie all the colors together.  So I needed grey, blue, brown and a touch of gold.  But it couldn't be floral because I got a new rug that's floral (I'll show you guys soon)  Turns out that finding what I wanted wasn't such an easy task. 

I've heard about printing on fabric but I had yet to try it, so I decided to try my hand at making my own fabric design by printing at home.  I used the chorus to "I Cross my Heart" by George Strait because its the song my husband and I danced to at our wedding (ahhhh.... cute I know!)

Here is what I came up with.

(Feel free to use the above printable however you want for personal use... not for resale in any form.  Following first would also be appreciated.)

And here is how my cute pillow turned out.


 I'm really proud of it and was pleasantly surprised at how well the printing of fabric actually turned out. 

If you search "printing on fabric" you can find a bunch of tutorials on how to do it.  Some say to soak your fabric in a product (Bubble Jet) to make it colorfast, other say just to iron it after printing to seal the color.  I ended up just using the print and iron method.  Mostly because I was too lazy to try to find Bubble Jet and its sits in my front room and most likely wont get much wear.  Depending on the application, you may want to look into the other method.



That being said, all I did was take some white cotton fabric and some freezer paper and cut them both to the size of printer paper.  Then you iron the fabric to the shiny side of the freezer paper so that your fabric has a backing.  Then print it using your printers best quality setting.  Once the ink has dried you can peel it from the paper and then iron the ink.



Now its ready to incorporate it into a pillow!  I cut my print into a square and then sewed it right onto the front of another square. I used a pretty stitch that had some weight to it.  Then I frayed all the raw edges.  I love the look!   I just made the pillow an envelope style case. 



Now think about all the cute printable that are out there....or better yet... search "printable" on Pinterest.

I know, enough said!  Go make a pillow!

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