I am so excited to show you my new labels! I have been looking into getting labels for a little while now and found that the reasonably priced ones tend to be plasticy (is that a word?) and that the woven ones are crazy expensive because you have to buy so many at a time.
My next thought was to make my own by getting them printed on fabric. I researched online to see if places like FedEx Office would print on fabric. I didn’t really have any luck and then one day I fell across Spoonflower on Twitter and kept debating how to make the labels.
Spoonflower is a company that will print your designs on fabric. They have eight different kinds of fabric to choose from, ranging from quilting weight cotton, to upholstery weight cotton twill and cotton silk. You can see the fabrics choices here.
You are able to design anything you would like and then upload it to their site for them to print. There are multiple layout options after you upload your image, including centering your image, a basic repeat (which is what I used), and other repeat options.
Well, a few weeks ago they were doing a fundraiser in which you could get a free 8 x 8 piece of fabric, so I took advantage of it!
Mark, my husband, had already designed my logo to match the Sewing Novice logo, so together we just had to figure out how much space we would need for each label and how to make it work to print on fabric. I pretty much watched and said, “Well, I need at least a quarter inch on each side to fold under so that the edges don’t fray.”
We ended up deciding that the logo would be about ¾ of an inch by ¾ of an inch, and then the whole piece that I would use to cut out would be 2 x 2. That way I would have plenty of room for folding and still not have a tiny tag, but small enough for little items that I sew. Doing it this way, I was able to get 16 tags out of my 8 x 8 piece of fabric.
I chose to have them printed on Linen-Cotton Canvas thinking that it would be more “tag-like” than quilting cotton. They are perfect! They are printed exactly as it appeared online and the color is exactly what I wanted. I washed them before using them and other than being a little wrinkled (you can iron them though) they are still perfect.
I highly suggest trying out Spoonflower, whether it is for tags or if you just want to try to design your own fabric. I plan on printing more labels once I am close to using all of the ones I have.
I have no affiliation and am not receiving any sort of compensation by Spoonflower or any one else for this post. All opinions are written solely by me to help out others interested in designing their own fabric or tags.
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I used my free swatch to make 4 labels for baby quilts that the women’s group at church give to the first baby in a family.