Fabric Labels

I have been trying to work out the best way to add a fabric label to my bags and thought I would share the things I have tried. 

I bought these many years ago for putting on knitted items which I had made, they work fine but I wanted something with a bit more impact.

 I got these ones from an ebay sellar, they work really well as they can be folded over to sew into the seam, but you have to use a stock image and I wanted something more personal.

I found loads of differant ideas on Pinterest and saved them all to this Board so you can see all the directions, so I won't go over them again.

I first tried using rubber stamps and Stazon ink on Cotton Webbing which took ages to do and it was quite hard not to get the ink from the edge of the stamp on the webbing as you can see above.

Next I tried some iron-on transfer paper and made my own design in Word - it was quite a simple design and worked ok on both webbing and gosgrain ribbon. The main thing is to remember to reverse the image before printing. 

 
I then got my new logo and wanted to use this for labels, again I printed it off the computer using transfer paper from crafty computer paper who have a fantastic range of transfer papers, again you need to remember to reverse the image before printing as above. I then cut the page into lots of individual squares and tried to iron them on !

As you can see the image is quite dense and doesn't work very well on the cotton webbing as it has too much texture so it was difficult to get an even label.

Next I tried gosgrain ribbon which was a little better but still not as even.

Finally I tried satin ribbon and found this much easier to get an effect - I have tried it on narrower and wider ribbon and both work well.

The wider ribbon can be folded over and sewn into the seam as above, this one is a little close to the seam so I just need to get the hang of spacing. I've also played with sewing the narrower ones on in differant ways, it tends to pucker a little and catch on the transfer if I use zig zag all the way round, but if I just straight stitch across each end it seems to look a little better.

I plan to try another couple of the ideas on the pinterest board - there is an interesting idea which lets you print direct onto fabric using freezer paper, I also plan to order some fabric from Spoonflower and will get some labels printed from there too - I will update you when I have tried these methods.