Printing…not on paper
I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but there’s a very good chance that most everyone in your life has a birthday more or less every year. I, personally, find this super irritating. I’ve decided I’m just about as old as I need to be, and most folks I know (at least most over the age of 25 or so) feel the same. Alas, it’s not in my power to change.
So given that pesky reality, I occasionally find myself in need of birthday presents. I ran out of ideas for these things long long ago, so I’ve taken to blatantly stealing ideas from other people. This time, the idea was using spoonflower to print old family recipes and make dishcloths. My mom had the birthday, and my sister was pressed into super secret squirrel service to dig up old recipes of my grandmother’s. I did the mucking about with images and sewing parts.
Now, these sewing parts were done last minute (shipping took rather longer than expected), which means these pictures were taken rather late at night in my dark dining room. You’ll have to forgive me. It was that, or no pics. And it’s way too good for blog fodder to go the no pics route.
The process starts by creating the image you want to use. That meant some quality time with the scanner (my sister’s job) and indesign (my job) to get all the images in a file of the right size and resolution for spoonflower’s system.
When the fabric comes, it’s got a good bit of selvage around the outside, so all of the image you provided is printed on useable fabric.
It does mean a fair bit of trimming though. I’m usually a fabric ripper, rather than a cutter, if I’m dealing with long, straight lines. Something about the weave of this fabric (I used the linen cotton canvas) meant it would tear one way, but not the other, so I had to cut that direction.
After the trimming came the ironing, first to make the fabric flat, then to turn the edges under. We all know how I feel about ironing. I’m still petitioning to have ‘sewing’ renamed ‘ironing with extra stabbing.’ Barry kept the ironed pieces safe.
Very safe. He may, in fact, have insisted he be left to guard them all night.
After that, it was just a matter of sewing them up. You will all graciously pretend I am able to sew a straight line. Failing that, you’ll not mention it unless you’re also coming over here to do it for me.
I like how they came out. I’m impressed with the print quality, and I think the fabric will just get softer with washing. I will never come to revel in ironing, but I think this has great potential to either preserve a sentimental image in a useful form (I’m a terrible bear of a person and have a hard time hanging onto things for purely sentimental reasons…they need to be useful for me to want to keep them) or make exactly what you want if you have a specific vision in mind. Anybody else see some potential in custom printed fabric?
This is a wonderful idea! I know several family members who would love these. I might be stealing the idea too….
What a neat idea! The sheer volume of ironing is the main reason why I’ve never given sewing or quilting a try. Plus I’m kind of afraid of sewing machines.
Fear is a totally normal response. Sewing machines eat fingers as a mid afternoon snack, and if you don’t want that to be your fingers, a bit of fear is helpful.
Thanks to Hunter who had this wonderful idea and does sew a straight seam …and to Alexis who found some favorite recipes that are known to wander around the house often hiding out in one of my cook books or in a magazines or the mystery box of new things I intend to try.
It was a lovely gift that brought back memories, secured the best chocolate pound cake recipe in the world and made it much harder to misplace. Both my parents are gone so the cake from mom and the funny notepad that it was written on was something my dad always had on his desk…so a gift from Hunter and my parents will always be something I treasure and use.
Great idea!
Now I’m intrigued …and want to try the Best Chocolate Pound Cake Ever. 🙂 I can read all the ingredients … but what is the ‘2 tsp flavouring’ at the end? Is this like vanilla, or something else along those lines?
I’ll put the whole recipe up in a little while!
I loved this hand towels. Are you sharing the design so that I could borrow the idea?
Of course you’re welcome to use the idea! I saw it first on the website I linked to up top, and spoonflower makes it pretty easy to take your own recipes (or whatever else you might want to use) and make some of your own.
I so want to have a yard or two of fabric made to use for gifts. I just can’t wrap my head around how to create the image for Spoonflower. How many prints of the recipe are on 1 yard of fabric? which yeilds how many dish towels per yard? Help me….please!!!!
It’s all very dependent on what sort of images you’re working with and how you want your project to work. I’d recommend reading the post where I got the idea (linked up top) and looking at spoonflower’s help info. It took me a few tries to get it right, but they have a good preview system so you can see what you’re getting!