Printing Stitchery Designs onto Fabric Tutorial

What you need:

fabric, freezer paper, scissors, rotary cutter, iron, computer, printer, scanner, picture/pattern.

 

The first thing you need to do is measure up your freezer paper to the size of an A4 sheet of paper - cut carefully - you want nice straight edges.

 

Iron your fabric flat and even give a spray of starch!

Slide your piece of cut freezer paper under your fabric and iron the two together - make sure you have the shiny side of the freezer paper up to temporarily stick to the fabric.

Trim the fabric carefully so that it is now the size of an A4 sheet of paper - I use my rotary cutter for this part.

Place your fabric into your printer tray - make sure it is upside down (fabric side down) if it is a printer like mine that feeds up over a roller so that the fabric runs under the ink cartridges.

This next step will vary depending on whether you are scanning a pattern or using a saved image.
I like to import my pictures into Publisher - it is easy to manipulate images with.  In my picture I was able to import the same picture twice and rotate one  so that I got a nice border around both trees.

Now this is one step you don't want to skip!  When you go to print you need to go into the settings and make sure it is going to print in grey scale not colour.

Hit print and wait for the magic to happen.  Give your image a quick iron, remove the piece of freezer paper off the back of the fabric but don't throw it out.  It's good for a few more uses before it won't iron on anymore.

Don't worry about the printed lines, they will be covered by your thread as you stitch.  In this image on the thicker parts I will use a satin stitch and back stitch for the thinner lines.

Hope that helps - feel free to email me with any questions.