Have you ever had this urge to figure something out and yet not been quite able to get there? That's me with the whole clothing label thing. I'm way too cheap to buy nice ones, though they are totally within reach (not the woven ones, but printed ones for sure). I hate the thought of ordering some and then getting them in the mail and being disappointed with the quality of the base fabric. I've seen tutorials for printing on fabric (with a laser printer...I have ink jet) and thought that would maybe work.
For a while I embroidered my own labels and then I totally changed my blog, rebranding everything. I don't have a good font in my embroidery software to mimic my new blog branding (shoulda thought about that when choosing that font, huh) and all efforts to self digitize it fell pretty flat. I also de-spise trimming ends/tails of thread between letters and designs, which is pretty much standard when embroidering little labels.
I was reading a really nice blog Elm Street Life and she has a great tutorial for printing your own labels. This morning I temporarily forgot I don't have a laser printer and got excited about making my own labels to use in the last few days of KCWC. I got into Word and tried my best to get moving. Something that should have only taken me a few minutes took about an hour--I had to restore my computer a few days ago and in so doing dumped the new font I used to rebrand the blog. Gag. So, after reloading it etc etc, I finally got it together.
Here's the template I used (in Google Docs).
LABEL TEMPLATE
SIDE LABEL TEMPLATE
For the label template, cells A, B, & C are where you turn under for your top border. I believe it works out to be 3/8". Cells G, H & I are where you turn under for your bottom border, again 3/8". Cells D & F are where you turn under for your sides, which are 1/2". I only outlined them in that first cell so you could see where your allowances are. You will put your text or image in Cell E. Text seemed to work better for me than an image. If you like a raggy look around the edges, simply don't fold. In Google Docs you can turn off the lines in the table but clicking in any cell, going to Table > Table Properties and change the Table Border to 0 pt.
For the side label template, the premise is the same. Cells A-E are your top border. Cells I-M are your bottom border. Fold in 1/2 and then you should have 1/2" seam allowance to sew in a side seam.
I didn't realize that Google Docs can be so limiting, so I also saved the templates as PDFs. You may be able to do something with that better.
LABEL TEMPLATE AS PDF
SIDE LABEL TEMPLATE AS PDF
After I made my templates, I followed Elm Street's tutorial to the letter. My printer did not appreciate having to suck up fabric and paper at th same time, so some of the printing got a little whompy.
As to the ink jet thing, setting the ink with heat does help it not to smear. The World Wide Web says everywhere that ink jet ink is water soluable and will wash out or fade badly when washed with soap. I got a label wet and then washed it with soap--it did fade a little bit, but hopefully after 50,000 washings it won't be a white square sewn in the back of the kids' things. I suspect buying labels off of Etsy will be cheaper than buying a laser printer. Wonder if I can sell that one to The Bank (my truly affectionate name for hubs).
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