Check out my freezer paper transfer fail! Apparently transferring printed images using freezer paper just isn’t as easy as pretty much everyone else makes it look.
It had to happen at some point, a project gone wrong to the point that I couldn’t salvage it after several failed attempts. You see, I happened upon an idea for printing handwritten recipes onto tea towels which seemed like a perfect gift to make my mom using my grandma’s recipes. I had also pinned a tutorial for transferring images using freezer paper quite a while back and it seemed like a good solution for this project.
I started out using flour sack towels I had cut in fourths. I printed my recipe on freezer paper cut to 11×14 to fit the size of the tea towel accordingly. When you’re doing a transfer like this, you print the image in reverse on to the shiny side of the freezer paper., which I did with no problems on my ink jet printer.
I had read up a fair amount on different processes, so I pre-washed and even pre-treated my fabric with a DIY Bubble Jet solution that was supposed to help permanently set transferred images. I was planning to try two methods, one where you ironed on the freezer paper to fuse to the fabric first. Here’s how that one went.
My image was almost non-existent on my fabric and what was still left on my freezer paper had turned yellow. I tried this a few times with variations of burnishing the image after ironing and wetting the fabric a little before ironing. Neither worked, so I decided to forego the iron with my next attempt.
This time I sprayed my fabric lightly with water, laid down my freezer paper image face down onto my fabric and then used a wooden stick (and later a spoon) to try to rub the image into the fabric.
This turned out a little bit better (at least I could see something), but the quality was pretty bad. It was very difficult to keep the freezer paper from sliding a little with such a large image to transfer, and it wasn’t dark enough to read very well. After a few hours of trying, I gave up on getting freezer paper transfer to work for this project.
I was determined to get these recipes onto some tea towels though, which I eventually did! Check out my full tutorial on how I did it NOT using freezer paper as a transfer method.
I’m not sure what the problem was with my freezer paper transfer method. I probably tried it 6-7 different ways. Maybe the ink in my printer wasn’t the right kind. I’ve seen other people use it on burlap and wood, so I may try it on a different medium someday.
Have you been able to get a freezer paper transfer to work? If so what are your tips? Feel free to post a link to your tutorial or other tips below.
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I cannot wait to see how you actually made it work!
Your towel look beautiful!! Can’t wait to see how you did it.
Hazarding a guess: a fabric pen and writing it on?