Getting Ready for the Grand Opening!

Well, the "sign guy" finally finished with the banner for the planned Grand Opening of the Red Door Museum.  Naturally, the night after he put it up, it rained.  So, it's just a little droopy, but still quite readable, and we are hoping it will attract lots of folks to the Grand Opening.

For the mini building enthusiasts out there, here's how the banner, printed on white cotton, was made:

Using a technique I learned from a fine art photographer friend, I was able to print out the banner with my ink jet printer on some plain, white cotton fabric.  It's actually a lot easier than you might think.  You just need to get hold of some nice, clean butcher paper (available in rolls from many art supply stores).  Butcher paper has a waxy coating on one side that will melt when you heat it.  First, cut a piece of butcher paper down to the size you want to print; in this case, I used the standard 8.5" x 11" that my printer was already set for and cut it with a craft knife.  You want the edges to be as clean and straight as possible, so it's best to use a metal straight edge as your guide with a cutting mat below.  Since my fabric was cleanly cut (it was a square cut especially for quilters), I could lay the paper flush along two of the edges.  Set your iron to the highest DRY setting (steam will make the paper wrinkle up) and let it pre-heat.  Then carefully iron the paper on to your fabric.  I found it works best to iron the paper rather than the fabric.  Pay special attention to the edge that will go into the printer first.  You want a tight bond along that edge; otherwise, the printer mechanism will pull at the fabric and you'll end up with problems.

Once the paper and fabric are bonded together, use a rotary cutting wheel (available and craft and fabric stores in the quilting section) and a metal straight edge to cut remaining fabric edges.  Now you have a standard paper size to feed through your printer.  You'll want the printer to print directly on to the fabric, so be sure you know which side your particular printer prints on.  My Canon prints so that I can put the printable side in the hopper facing me, but I used to have an HP printer that had to have the printable side facing down.  Put the fabric/paper into the tray where you usually put your stack of blank paper and just print normally.  If you can adjust the settings, print on the highest quality setting available.  Then print just as you would any blank piece of paper.

This is the sign as it came out of the printer!  Pretty easy, really.  To create the design, I used Photoshop.  I also included some cutting lines that will guide me when I cut out the banner, but won't show in the final piece.  At this point, you can peel away the paper backing and discard it.

Here I'm cutting out the banner, using my rotary cutter and a handy transparent acrylic guide that Fiskar makes especially for quilters.

I wanted to give my banner a texture more like canvas might have, and also wanted to help protect the printing, which is not waterproof.  If you get the printed fabric wet, the ink will run -- a lot!  I had a can of spray polyurethane out in the garage so, after separating the fabric from the backing, I sprayed it front and back with a fairly heavy coat to help seal the ink and give the fabric body.  Then I discovered (gotta love serendipity!) that it also made it possible to pinch and form the fabric to get it to hang as though it had been out in the weather!  Once I had it formed into a shape I liked, I attached it to the building with some tiny nails from miniatures.com.

And Voila!