Recently I was rushing to get a donation quilt completed, and I was pondering a few different labels when a bright idea came to me. I don't know...maybe half of you have thought of this already.

I quickly scanned part of the quilt front and used my photo editing program to cut out the center (making the white area) and leaving the color frame which was the part of the quilt block I scanned.

I printed up what I needed to say in MSWord, taped it into the center of the paper label, recopied it (so it was clean - no cutting lines showing) and then printed it onto the fabric that's designed to go through an ink jet printer. Another option (depending on your photo editing program) is to just drop a text box right into the white area of the scanned photo (after editing out the center) and put your quilters info in right then. I manually put the text on the edited fabric photo (prior to the final copying) because I was in an editing program that I'm not familiar with. My printer is out of ink so I was using my husband's system and I can't find ANYTHING user friendly on his computer...lol.

In less then 5 min I had a label that not only matched the front of the quilt perfectly, but was very legible. I dry ironed it to set the ink...and it was done!

Here's a photo of the edited label prior to the printing being added. You could either hand write your label info on at this point or just work up a font that fit in the center area... copy it again (the recopying just seems to fuse the layers visually)...and print off a label that perfectly matches your quilt. Clear as mud right?

It was fun.. it was fast. :thumbup:

What a great idea.

Wow..thanks for sharing.

Is the quilt one huge 10 min block? How big is it? (loved the idea of the label, but I think that is beyond me, I've never printed on fabric.)

Nice.

that's a clever idea. thanks for sharing it

Ok.. I added a couple photos to show more.

I scanned the single block in photo #2. I just unceremoniously STUFFED it onto the scanner and held the lid down...LOL Then - I cropped it to a clean rectangle shape, cut the center out (you can color fill in white or ANY background color you'd like). Added the text...and printed.

LaceLady...
TRUST ME ON THIS...there is NOTHING to printing on fabric. I used to think like you think. I used a JoAnn's sale coupon and went and bought some fabric for printers (it's prepackaged). If you have an ink jet printer that's ALL you need. You just make SURE you lay the fabric product to be printed on the CORRECT direction (face up or face down) into your printer tray...and hit print. Done deal...lol

I will say you need to make sure you are printing on HIGH quality or the label can come out a bit faded.
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Good idea

neat idea

Great idea, thank you.