Printing on Fabric and Image Transfers

I often find an interesting image that I would like to either put onto fabric or use on paper or card without either just printing it directly onto the paper or collaging it. In the first case, I've used those special fabric sheets that you can buy to go through your inkjet printer but those work out very expensive so I've also used my own fabric ironed onto freezer paper and put that through my printer in an effort to economise. With this more economical method, I've found that the results are very much affected by the quality and type of fabric used. One obvious example is, if you use a fabric with a very open weave, you will not get a very good image. I used the printing on fabric method for my Pink Lady and Sepia Lady fabric postcards which you can see here.

Recently, I've been experimenting a bit with transfers. There are many ways of transferring and, depending on the medium used, you get a different result but, generally, the transer images will not be as sharp as those printed directly through a printer. You can, however, get a more 'arty' look with transfers. It all depends on what sort of effect you want to create.

Some examples of various mediums that can be used to transfer images onto paper or fabric are gel medium, Citra Solv and Pinesol. I had tried transferring with gel medium onto Lutrudur for this project but had not tried the Citra Solv or Pinesol. A search for a Citra Solv UK stockist unearthed this supplier but they don't have the Citra Solv concentrate which appears to be the product used for transfers. As I haven't been able to find a UK stockist for Pinesol either and the thing that these two products seemed to have in common was that they had a high concentration of citrus in them, I decided to see if the general purpose lemon cleaner that I use in my kitchen would work. So, a little while ago, I tried transferring some images for ATCs onto card with my general purpose lemon cleaner and it worked! These are the results I got.


I did try on fabric too and got a more blurry image. I like the effect of the general purpose lemon cleaner transfer on card. It gives a sort of grainy, aged look.