Make your own labels cheap!

I made real clothing labels for less than $13? No really. I am not a magician... or a mime. But I don't know what that has to do with anything.


When I first thought it might be nice to have labels sewn into the things I made for my kids (mostly so my 3-year-old could know front from back) I looked into woven labels... and quickly gave that idea a big fat "Psssshaaaaa". As in, "Pshaaaaa right! That's never going to happen."  Holy crap.  Those suckers are expensive.  On top of that, there are minimums that I'll never use up on my couple-times-a-month sewing projects. Lame.


Then came See Kate Sew. I think I found her tutorial via pinterest?  Not sure. Anywho, I must credit her with this great idea and tutorial. Here's what I did.


Have you heard of Spoonflower?  They will print fabric for you.  It's awesome.  If you've ever uploaded photos to be printed and sent to your house on shutterfly or snapfish, it's pretty much the same thing... except on fabric! 


I took my blog header, and made it a jpg.  I think you can do this in Paint.  Sorry to be all fancy, but I have Illustrator and Photoshop, which I used... but seriously, it's a jpg.  You can do it in Word I think. And if you can't, Google how to convert what you have.  You don't even need a "logo".  You can just type out "Mommy made it" or something like that and save it as a jpg. Are you still reading?


Add a bunch of white space around it.  I other words... crop it with a lot of room on all sides. Maybe an inch on each side? Upload that sucker to Spoonflower.  

Once your jpg is uploaded, it should look something like this.

Now here is where I admit I messed up.  See the rulers along each edge?  And see how my design isn't even 1" long?  Yeah, I failed to pay attention to that the first time I ordered and my labels were way too small.  So... see where it says Design Size on the right?  Mess with that to make your labels the size you want.  If you still can't figure it out, upload a bigger jpg.  Like I said it took me two tries.

I ordered the quilting weight in a fat quarter. 

About a week later.... it arrived.

The one on the right is the first batch I ordered... too small!  No worries, I did it again... and lightened the yellow.  Much better.

Check out all those labels!  And you paid a grand total of $11... plus shipping, but I think my shipping was like $1.  Awesome.

Cut those suckers out.  See why we left lots of extra white space?

Iron in all 4 sides.  You'll probably burn the crap out of your fingers on this step. : )

Stitch all the way around.

Done!  I think my total cost is less than 6 cents a piece.  I ordered a fat quarter... you could order a yard too but that's a crazy amount of labels : )  Let me know how it goes!