printing on fabric

Here’s the short story for you skimmers: Freezer paper + fabric + inkjet printer = banner.
And now for the slightly longer version: When thinking of how to make a banner for my brother’s wedding, I contemplated the freezer paper stencil method which I have used before (seen here, forgive the bad photos) with some success. The idea of cutting out intricate letters wasn’t thrilling me though. Suddenly I remembered reading that you can use freezer paper to stiffen fabric enough to feed through an inkjet printer so you can print directly on the fabric. I was skeptical but I had a bit of freezer paper lying around and a designer to help execute the idea (he wasn’t lying around mind you, but kindly offered to help with the type. Thanks, hon!).

All you do - and it’s really deceptively simple - is iron the glossy side of the freezer paper onto the wrong side of the fabric and then cut it down to fit in the printer (8.5″ x 11″). Then just print on the fabric side, and peel the paper off.

This example (above) shows the heart with the backing on the left, and the same heart sans freezer paper on the right. I love how pulling the backing off pulls at the threads and warps it ever so slightly.

For the banner part, I cut the letters down to the same size and folded and sewed over the tops to make a pocket for the twine. The whole project - from start to finish, from layout to threading the letters onto the twine - took less than an hour. Easiest banner ever.
I recommend checking out this instructable, which goes over the process in better detail and discusses what to do to make the fabric washable.

Found here.