Printing on Fabric for T's headboard

Well, let's just say that the end of the school year and the first month of summer kind of did me in.  Way over scheduled!  I hate it when that happens, but with 4 kids it is something that occurs often.  This week things have slowed down a bit and next week I am calling a no schedule pool week to make up for the first month of summer being so busy.  Anyways that is why I have not written any posts or done many projects!  Time to remedy that by finishing T's headboard that I started a few months ago.

So, here is a quick tutorial for printing on fabric!  The button fabric was printed using this method!

Besides your inkjet printer and some fabric you will need the following:
(not pictured is the Bubble Jet Rinse)
The freezer paper can be found at the grocery store near the tin foil sometimes.  It will be a different brand as the one I have is specifically for crafts and comes in sheets instead of rolls.

You first follow the directions on the Bubble Jet to treat your fabric.  It is pretty easy.  Cut a piece of fabric slightly larger than you want and soak it in the solution for about 5 minutes and then hang it to dry.

Once it is dry you then iron the shiny side of your freezer paper to the wrong side of your fabric. I forgot to take a picture, but I had a scrap that will hopefully help you see what I mean.   the top part that I am peeling up is the fabric and the bottom is the freezer paper that I have ironed it onto.

Then cut the fabric/ freezer paper down to the size of paper your printer will take - typically 8.5 inches by 11 inches.  for my printer you place the side you want printed on down, but you will have to check your printer to see.  You want to print on the side of the fabric that the freezer paper is not attached to.

Then use the proper settings for your printer to print your image onto the fabric.  You may have to play with your printer and the fabric a bit to find the right settings.

Once you have it printed let it dry for awhile and then peel the freezer paper off of the back.  You are now ready to make your buttons!

This project hit a snag when my first try print of maps on fabric for his buttons didn't work.  I forgot that fabric will suck in the ink more than paper and turned down the amount of ink being printed.  I had to fix that problem before I could move on.  They turned out perfect on the second try.  This time I turned up the saturation on my file that I was working with so that it almost looked a bit overdone which caused it to look perfect on the fabric.   Just remember that when you are doing the printing.

I then used the directions from this post to make the actual buttons:

https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8033456016525440553#editor/target=post;postID=4920586827072482513;onPublishedMenu=allposts;onClosedMenu=allposts;postNum=2;src=postname

And you end up with this!

Well, that is a super quick version of how I did the buttons for T's headboard.  This week or maybe next I will be putting the whole thing together and getting it hung on his wall along with a few other fun things I got on my girl's week for his room.  Yup, even on the girl's week us mom's still think about our kids!  I am pretty excited to put the finishing touches on his map room!