Yiskah Knits: hand knitted jewellery and accessories by Jessica Biscoe

DIY: Making custom fabric labels

9 Nov 2011

It’s almost one month to the Christmas craft market at The Makery in Bath. I thought it would be fun to show you guys my planning and preparation as the date draws nearer. This is my first ever craft fair so it’s really exciting to organise the theme of the stall, design how the price tags are going to look and choose what products to feature. I have lists coming out of my ears, and today my heart was set on labels.

Ever since I saw this post from Sophia at Iro Iro Crafts I dreamt of creating labels for my knits and now I have the perfect reason. Her tutorial is excellent, so head over there if you’d like to try for yourself. I adapted the process a little to make a large batch at once.

I spotted this cotton fabric tape in the haberdashery in my local market and thought how perfect it would be for the job – minimal cutting required! I picked up 2m super cheap, which should be more than enough. The secret to making these labels is iron-on transfer paper, which is surprisingly easy to get hold of – I found a pack of 5 sheets in Wilkinson’s and Sophia found hers in Tesco. You need to do a little bit of work on the computer before hand to prepare your image, but any basic photo editing software will suffice so long as you can create a mirror-image, or flip your graphic horizontally.

Once I was happy with my flipped image I duplicated it across 1 A4 sheet, which fit around 40 individual labels. I made mine 35mm x 13mm. I found that cutting each one so they were smaller than the area of tape made it easy to set up and iron lots at once. Make sure you only iron for around 60 seconds or else the finished image could look a little singed.

Et voila! A whole strip of labels to cut up and hand sew into my knits. I absolutely love the finished product, it gives a unique finish to your handmade goodies and makes sure people don’t forget where they came from.

craft fair, diy, etsy

4 Comments

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• onetenzeroseven says:

  9 November 2011 at 6:40 pm

  These look absolutely gorgeous!! <3

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• Jess says:

  9 November 2011 at 8:47 pm

  Thank you, hun :)

  Reply
• Tina says:

  19 March 2012 at 9:33 am

  Thank you so much for this – I have some transfer paper left from a previous project and will pick up some tape today. Much less stressful than trying to find small quantities from manufacturers!

  Reply
  • Jess says:

    19 March 2012 at 9:59 am

    Hi Tina, I’m so glad you found this useful. It’s surprising how easy they are to make as well – really good to get a big batch out at once!

    Reply