Computers & Quilting

Computers and the Internet are usually a great time saver. But they can also waste hours of your valuable quilting time.  Here are hints from other quilters.

I have resently found a way to save lots of money on printable sheets.  First you take your material,  I use Muslum, and wash and dry it,but you use NO fabric softeners or dryer sheets.  While you are waiting for your fabric you take your freezer paper and cut it to size.  Which I take a piece of my printer paper and trace around it.  Cut out as many as you need, which I keep some ahead.  Then set the paper aside.  After your fabric is ready you can start ironing.   As you iron an area of fabric you can place a piece of freezer paper glossy side down to wrong side of fabric and iron over the freezer paper.   It adheres itself to the fabric and all you do is cut out as you go along.  Then when you are ready you can place in printer and print anything you want on your fabic sheets.  I make these up ahead of time so I have them onhand for when I need some.  But I have found out that if you do make them out ahead of time keep them in a flat place or the corners will curl up. Then you will have to reiron them.  Then after 24 hours you can peel the paper off the back.  I usually color fast them by waiting 24 hours for them to dry, then rinsing them under cold water.  Then place them on a towel and dab them with a paper towel.  Then iron dry on high setting. Then you are done.  But I have saved a lot of money with this idea and I hope you all can find this helpful.

A great way to transfer images to fabric is to use printable transfer paper that you iron on to the fabric. This transfer paper is inserted to your ink jet printer like regular paper and an image is printed. Once the image has been printed, the image can be easily transferred to the fabric using a hot iron. One popular use for this method is to print photographs and then transfer the images to fabric you can use in a quilt.

Using your home ink jet color printer, you can print directly on fabric. This is great for making your own fabric patters or name tags. The fabric is soaked in a substance called Bubble Jet Set (BJS) and allowed to dry. After drying, the fabric is then ironed onto a piece of freezer paper. The fabric and paper is then inserted directly into your color ink jet printer just as you would a regular sheet of paper. Only use an ink jet printer, since this system will not work on a laser printer and could potentially cause damage.