Selection of fabric
must be thin and drape-ee (since you are working at
such a small scale) and possess a tight, smooth
weave. I tested several types of fabric, but the
100% bleached muslin worked the best. Oak Hill makes
a nice smooth muslin. Please be advised that Paper
Minis can not be held responsible for the
performance of your printer. If you prefer there are
many fabric sheet products on the market that you
can use instead. Type “inkjet printer fabric sheets”
into the search engine of your choice and many
brands will appear on your internet search.
1. Wash the fabric by
hand to get all the sizing out of the weave. You
don’t want anything to impede the ink.
2. You will need a
roll of 18” wide freezer paper. This is paper coated
with plastic. By cutting a piece 14” long you can
easily get two sheets 8.5”x11” across.
3. Lay the paper on
the fabric and cut to size–slightly smaller or
larger doesn’t matter, for you are going to cut it
all down to size 8.5”x11” later on.
4. Heat your iron to
the cotton setting. Lay fabric down on plastic side
of freezer paper and iron. You don’t have to go at
it sheepishly. The purpose of this exercise is to
completely adhere the fabric–especially around the
edges–to the paper’s plastic so there is a stiff
backing to send through the printer. Don’t test the
adhesion until fabric sheet has cooled down. If
there isn’t a good contact, iron some more.
5. Next take an
8.5”x11” piece of paper and trace two on the fabric.
Very carefully cut perimeters with scissors. Be
careful not to fray edges.
6. Take two pieces of
scotch tape and fold over each of the two corners
that will lead into the printer. This will help to
keep stray things from catching as the sheet goes
through the printer.
7. One more thing to
do, pick every little stray thread off the fabric
and tweeze any noticeable nubby imperfection. Stray
threads and loose edges act as wicks for the ink and
you will get ink blobs when that happens.
8. Next place sheet in
the printer feed bin as normal (make sure fabric
side is in print-side position)...and print away.
Use normal paper print settings--you don’t want to
over-saturate with ink. If you could zoom in on photo #8
you would see the wicking problem on the far right. This
happened because the fabric separated from the
freezer paper. Now peel off the freezer paper--it
should separate easily.
Special Note: I had some banding on my prints
and needed to run a print-head cleaning. If this
happens to you, you will probably find print-head
cleaning instruction either under the hood/cover of
the printer or in the printer dialog box. I’ve found
that many people think they are running out of ink
when they see banding, when actually the print-head
just needs cleaning. I also found a stray thread in
the printer that was wicking ink to my other
printing job, so take note in case this happens to
you.
