How to make your own fabric labels

A few months ago I was determined to find a way of doing my own labels, but found it quite difficult to find any tutorial on this. The thing that I found the hardest was dealing with the printer and that might very well just be me and my lack of technical knowledge. I always thought I was pretty savvy on a computer back in the day when I had a proper job, but these days I find myself constantly singing the lyrics 'my computer think I am gay grey', and soon I might also feel like throwing this 'piece of junk away' from Placebo's new song 'Too many friends' .  No disrespect here to any older bloggers and readers, but whenever I am faced with technical difficulties, i.e. struggles with my computer, I always feel like I should be well over a hundred. It's that thing where your kids, aged 6 and 4 starts knowing more than you and boy does that make you feel old or what?? Anyways, it took me a couple of attempts to figure out how to print these labels, so I figured a little tutorial might be helpful to a few folk out there interested in making their own fabric labels.

So here goes.

What you are going to need.

1. A pack of transfer paper, which I bought here.
2. Some ribbon and or tape of your choice
3. Computer
4. Inkjet printer and not Lazerjet
5. Iron and ironing board or mat
6. Cup of tea and some chocolate (in my case Lindt 70%)


Step 1
Design your label on either word, excel or whatever programme you wish to use. I just wanted something simple, so I used word, but you can add an image or tweak this to whatever you want.

 

 

Step 2

Once you are happy with the colour, font and everything else, it's time to print it. Make sure you do a test run on normal paper and not transfer paper as it's pretty expensive stuff. Select print and then click on 'Printer Properties'

Once you have done this you will see there is something along the lines of 'Basic, Advanced and Support' as options, select 'Advanced.

 

Once you have chosen 'Advanced' then you should see 'Mirror Printing' or something similar as an option. Select 'Mirror Printing'.

 

 

You are almost there now, all you need to do now is have a sip of tea and press the 'Print' button and voila. Remember to try your first one on normal paper just to check that the mirror image printing has worked.

This is what you should have in front of you now. Once you are happy with everything, repeat the process again, but this time using the transfer paper.

 

 

Step 3
Now you need to cut your labels so that you can lay them on to your chosen ribbon or tape. Once you have cut the labels, I put mine all in a bowl so they are to hand and easy to grab, you can lay one or two labels at a time on to your ribbon and then put your iron on it for a good 30 seconds if not a little more. It will be easy to see when the glue has taken as the label will be completely attached to the ribbon or tape. I spaced mine out so there is enough space in between, baring in mind that you want to cut it and sew it in/on to the desired product.

Step 4
It's important to give it some time to dry before you start peeling off the back of the labels. This is the exciting bit to see how it all turned out. Slowly remove the back of each label and hey presto you should have all your labels on a ribbon or tape, ready for you to cut up and use.

Step 5
Lastly I just rolled all my labels on to some old cotton reels, ready to be used. I have used these on many different things that I have made and they look lovely.

 

Step 6

Make another cup of tea and feel chuffed that you have managed to make your own labels.

 

 

I hope you have found the tutorial easy to follow, please give me some feedback as I am new to this whole tutorial malarkey and would welcome any feedback.

 

Wishing you all a very happy day.

 

Warm wishes

Hannapat

xoxo