Text on Post Card

Since I can't draw, I like to combine fabric motifs and words on fabric postcards, but I've had trouble planning how to place the words so that when I put the fabric through the printer they are in the right location on the card. I figured out a way to do it last week when I made little cards for the grandchildren.

First I made a layout of the fabric motifs, scanned it into Photoshop, and sized it to 4 x 6 inches. ( It has to be reversed on the scanner bed, which was tricky for me at first.)


Then I made a new layer and put in the text I wanted, placing it correctly.


Then I made only the Text layer visible, and fed the pre-treated fabric fused on freezer paper into the printer. This gave me pale blue fabric with red lettering, and no image of course.

Then I fused the fabric motifs into their place on the background, and finished the card as usual. Unfortunately, I forgot to take a picture before I mailed it, but it was very cute. The outline heart was red, of course, and the edges were finished with red zig zag.

You could also print the entire card from Photoshop, making a colored background layer, but I like the combination of sewing and printing.

This process may be blindingly obvious to many people, but it was a breakthrough for me, and didn't strain my very meager knowledge of Photoshop.

P. S. After finishing this post, I remembered that I CAN treat you to a look at the one where the printing smeared so that I had to do it again. So I guess the final lesson of this tutorial is DON'T FORGET TO HEAT SET THE PRINTING.