Embroidered Pillows with Printable Fabric

For Christmas 2017, I made some embroidered pillows. I used printable fabric on some of them, and after talking about it with a friend today I thought I’d share.

I used June Tailor printable fabric (cotton) that I got from Amazon. It goes through your inkjet printer like normal slightly thicker paper. It has a backing on it to help it go through. Then you let it dry for 20 minutes or so and then you remove the backing and iron it to set the ink. I can't remember the exact instructions, but I also wetted it and ironed it again. IIRC, that makes it colorfast for washing.

The finished fabric is different from usual cotton. It's kind of stiff and it's a bit "sticky" and hard to get a needle through. It also will not spring back into shape to "heal" holes so it's not forgiving of mistakes.

For the baby photo I used Weeks Dye Works thread to embellish the hat. For the flower/ring photo I used various beads I had and some DMC light effects thread. And for the lighthouse photo I used a green bead mix that I got from my favorite bead site, Fire Mountain Gems and Beads (whenever I see that I sing it to the tune of "Gypsies, Tramps, and Thieves"... you're welcome). The clouds were an attempt to cover some marks that got on the fabric from the iron.

That reminds me: be sure your iron is clean. You have to iron directly on the picture, which I was very afraid to do. There was something on mine that got on the lighthouse picture, like I said, and it would not come off. If you didn't know you could clean your iron, now you do. I like this kit from Rowenta from Amazon. It comes with towels, which is awesome because you don't have to ruin your own towels. All you do is put some of the cream on the towel or iron (can't remember which) and rub the iron on the towel. Then repeat that about 400 times. Enjoy!