PRINTING ON FABRIC WITH AN INKJET PRINTER

Did you know you could use your regular old inkjet printer to print on fabric? A world of possibilities opened up to me when I learnt this, and I immediately ran to my printer to try it out. I was so excited to realize how simple it was! You can pretty much print whatever image you like, as long as the piece of fabric fits in your printer, i.e. the width of a normal page. It can be much longer than a normal page though, as most printers have settings that allow them to print continuously, so you could even print a long fabric banner if you wanted to!

To print on fabric using an inkjet printer you will need some card (or any heavy paper—the front page of a magazine cover would work well), masking tape, fabric, an image and, of course, a printer.

Directions: Cut the piece of fabric down to size to fit your printer. Once you have the right size, tape the fabric down to the card using masking tape. The card will help guide the fabric through the printer, but make sure to cover the edge of the fabric in tape and cut off any strings so that it won’t get stuck in the printer. Once the fabric is taped down, place the card and fabric in the paper tray of the printer. Be sure that it’s facing the right way, so that the fabric gets printed and not the card. Test with regular printer paper if you’re not sure which way it should be facing. Once you’re all set up, print your image! The printer will pick up the card as if it’s just a normal piece of paper and print onto the fabric.

I used my printed fabric to make a simple drawstring bag for keeping film in. I have a tendency of just throwing film in my bag when I go out on photo adventures, and then spending ages trying to find them again. The image I used is one Graeme created in illustrator. If you’d like to use the same image, you can download it here (thanks, Graeme!).