Printing Fabric Part 1: Dyeing Fabric

Last week, I wrote about how I used my computer and my ink-jet printer to print all the fabric patches in the quilt “Trinity”.  But since you may never have an urgent need to create a color-wheel quilt, how else could you incorporate fabric printing into your quilting?

I guess the first obvious conclusion is that you can use your computer to custom dye small quantities of fabric.  And it doesn’t have to be a solid color.  You could add a motif:

Or, you could add a pattern, just like a print fabric.

You could add texture and create fabric that looks like batik.

Here’s a block made with a real batik and this computer-generated textured fabric.

You could also gradate the color.  This example gradually changes color from white through to magenta.

And here’s a quilt block featuring the computer dyed fabric in the center patch.

Whatever you can create on your computer screen, you can print to fabric.  All of these examples were done using CorelDraw software.  But even if you don’t have this kind of software, there are lots of options available on the internet.

This is computer wallpaper, intended to be used as a background for your computer screen.  But I think it would make amazing fabric, don’t you?

This PowerPoint background would also make lovely fabric.

Here it is in a snowball block with other snowflake fabric.

These are just a few ideas of how you could use your ink-jet printer to custom dye small quantities of fabric.  Stay tuned for part 2 and more options for printing fabric.