Printing Embroidery Patterns to Fabric

This has been a real work week of writing and editing classes for myself and for StitchMAP...and I'm battling another week of insomnia...so sleeping strange hours. Honestly, not getting much stitching done. But, there are a couple of classes coming up in the next few weeks that I have to get stitched, photographed, and written for StitchMAP. So, thought I'd get one of them traced on to my fabric and started. But, when I taped the pattern to the light table...it has so many tiny little lines, close together...that I just didn't have the energy (motivation) to want to even get started. So, instead...I decided to print the pattern right on the fabric.  

I began by spraying starch on the fabric...getting it good and wet. Pressed it until it was nice and flat and dry. I'm using cotton fine weave linen (...but have used cotton batik in the past with great success too). Then, I cut a piece of Freezer Paper (wax side/paper side) about 10 x 12 and pressed it to the back side of my linen.   

Then, I used my quilter's 12"-square ruler and trimed the linen/paper sandwich...first on the top/side edges...

...then the other two side until it was a perfect 8.5 x 11.0 size for my printer. I loaded it into the ink jet printer paper tray (linen side down...because that's the way my printer works)...and now have a printed fabric sheet to embroidery.

Next, peel off the waxed Freezer paper from the linen fabric.

I added a piece of fusible interfacing to the back to stabilize the thin linen for this project.

And hooped...and am ready to stitch!   So, if you have a decent inkjet printer...and a small enough project to fit a standard size of printer paper...and enough "extra" to sacrifice in trimming...you might like this quick method of getting an electronic pattern to the fabric. If your pattern has Logos or such that you don't want printed...you have to crop those out of the picture...or scan the pattern with these parts covered up with typing paper to get them "off" before you print. Since I created this pattern for the class..I could drop out all of the parts I didn't not need...like the leaves.