How to Copy Drawings to Fabric
Fabric crafts are a way to customize your clothing, blankets, pillowcases and many other household and personal items with different fabric colors, patterns and textures. When you truly want to make a project your own, you can create your own fabric patterns and designs by transferring or copying drawings onto your fabric.
Things You'll Need
- Tracing paper
- Masking tape
- Fabric transfer pencils
- Iron
- Ink jet printer
- Scanner
- Printer fabric
Instructions
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Transfer Pencils
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1
Place a piece of tracing paper over the drawing. Secure the paper with masking tape to prevent it from moving around while you trace.
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2
Use a fabric transfer pencil to trace the lines of the image onto the tracing paper. Remove tape from tracing paper once the tracing is complete.
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3
Pin the tracing paper, penciled side down, to the area of your fabric where you want the drawing.
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4
Set your iron to the wool setting with no steam. Iron the tracing paper to transfer the pencil marks from the tracing paper to the fabric.
Printer Fabrics
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5
Purchase printer-specific fabric from your local fabric store or, in some cases, office supply store.
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6
Scan your drawing into the computer using your system's scanning software.
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7
Place the printable fabric into your ink jet printer, just as you would regular paper, and simply press "Print." The printer will print directly onto the special fabric, which can then be used in quilts or other crafts.
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Tips & Warnings
You also can print a scanned drawing onto iron-on transfers, then use an iron to transfer the image to fabric, such as a T-shirt.
Follow the specific directions of your transfer product exactly for best results.
Only use printer fabrics on projects you will not need to be washed later since running the fabric through the washer can ruin the image.
Do not use a laser printer on fabric; the laser printer gets too hot for the process.
References
- Photo Credit Jupiterimages/Polka Dot/Getty Images
