If you’ve read my last couple of posts about my plans for my partner’s birthday, you’ll know that some of the final presents I needed to make him were three T-shirts with ironed on prints.

(If you haven’t read these posts, don’t worry, there’s absolutely no fascinating back story you’re missing out on, beyond what I just wrote, required for enjoying this post, but if you would like to catch up, you can find them here: Three secret projects and His (birthday) scarf.)

If you’d been waiting in suspense to find out whether I would get these made in time for his birthday, the answer was no. The printer arrived the day before, which coincided with a grumpy baby day, so there was no chance at all of me getting anything done. So instead of the finished product, Jamie received three plain T-shirts with tags on and a promise to be turned into something a little more wonderful…

But, in the end, we had a crack at one of them together over the weekend.

This is how we got on:

Supplies

• Plain cotton T-shirt. (I bought mine from the bargainous Primark, at a whopping £2.50 each.)
• T-shirt transfer paper. (I bought mine from eBay. Stick it in the search and loads of options come up. I had two packs with ten pages each: one for printing on light fabrics and one for dark.)
• Some cool graphics. (You can use whatever you like here. I’ve been particularly enjoying the ones at Clip Art etc. You can use these images for free for non-commercial projects.)
• A printer (ink jet not laser jet).
• An iron, with the steam setting switched off.
• A hard surface, with a couple of tea towels on top. Note: not an ironing board as this is too soft for the transfer to take properly.

Once you’ve gathered all your supplies, it’s really very simple to transfer the print onto the T-shirt. The instructions that follow work with the transfer paper I had, but obviously check the instructions on your paper before you go ahead.

How to

1. Practice printing your graphic out onto normal printer paper first. You want to make sure you know which side of the paper your printer is using, that the graphic is the right size for your T-shirt and that it looks how you’d like it to once it’s printed out. Put the white paper over the T-shirt and make sure it all looks right. It’s also worth pointing out that your final graphic will appear as a mirror image of the one in front of you, so make sure it looks okay this way round. (If you’ve got words in your image, you can use the “mirror” setting on your printer, though this might not give as clean a print as normal.) But at this stage, experiment and make sure you’re completely happy with your results before you put it onto the transfer paper.
2. Print!
3. Cut round the details of the graphic as closely as you can. Try and remove as much of the area that has nothing on as possible.
4. Line up your image onto the T-shirt. The clear side with the print on should face the fabric, the white side with the squares faces out. Check and check again that it’s straight and just as you want it to be.
5. Iron the paper for around two minutes. Make sure the steam setting is not switched on. Concentrate on the centre first and then work your way out to the sides.
6. Let the paper cool down. (I found this part hard! Patience is not my strong point.)
7. Carefully and slowly remove the white backing, starting at one of the edges and pulling it off evenly.
8. Admire your creation…

Verdict

Update, summer 2014: since writing this post, I’ve discovered the absolutely wonderful transfer paper made by Lesley Riley, which produces a really brilliant finish and definitely could be used on products to sell. In fact, I’ve plans in the pipeline to sell some tops I’ve made using it!

I’ve also written a few more tips on how to get the best results when using transfer paper, which you can read here if you like: Things I’ve learnt: tips on transferring images to fabric

I’d never tried this before and was really excited to see how it was going to turn out, wondering if this could be a good way to get  prints onto babygrows for my embryonic fabric line. I have to admit, however, my expectations slightly outweighed the end result. From a distance, and away from direct light, the T-shirts look great. Every little detail of the pattern has been transferred, crisp and clear onto the T-shirt fronts.

But up close, or in the light, the area where the transfer has been ironed is really shiny and stiff, to the point of being reflective. That area has also lost any stretch, so it sits stiff and solid even when it’s being worn. Overall, it definitely looks amateur.

Because I’d used an image that has lots of black lines with white “space” behind it, those areas which should appear neutral show up shiny. I think this method would work far better for transferring on a solid block image, probably with colour, rather than one that any blank spaces in. Then, you’d need to cut exactly round the image you had and you’d eliminate my problem of shiny areas where nothing is happening.

I’ll reassess once they’ve been through the wash a few times, as that might help soften it up a bit, but for now, this wouldn’t be a method I’d repeat for anything but a “homemade” effect.

I’ll try the next one with a solid image, though, in colour, and see how that works out. Will report back with findings…

If you try this method of printing images onto fabric, do post a comment below and let me know how you get on.