Photo Transfer Wall Hanging

I came up with this great little idea of a wall hanging to get those pictures off your computer and up on your wall and use some of your creative energy and those fabric scraps and some of those colorful fabrics that you have in your stash. I know you have them. So what we've come up with here is this. Is gonna be the end. Well, this is the beginning of the end project. But I wanted to talk to you about how we kind of get there using all of those fabrics that you have in your stash and some of your scraps. So what we're gonna talk about first about how to audition your fabrics for this project. And by auditioning fabrics, what I mean by that is taking some fabric out and just laying it down and using some, just some fabric to frame the pictures that you will have printed out on some computer fabric. And I will show you that in just a second. So, as you can see, that fabric is quite busy and I'm not quite liking it. But I'm gonna show you the difference of busy fabric and there. So it's kind of busy and it takes away from the photographs. So I'm going to take out some bold fabric. I like bold. So. And it still has an impact and it's still fun. There. And it still looks very creative and artistic. So this is my little guy when he was like three and he's screaming train. He's telling the world that there's a train. All little boys love trains. Well, most of them do. So there you are. So you can put as many pictures on your wall hanging you can make it long to fit whatever wall you would like or you could make it wide. However you would like. I mean, it's completely up to you because it's your project, right? So that's auditioning fabrics and you can really make it what you want. So we are going to put this aside for right now and I'm gonna show you that computer fabric, printer fabric that I printed these pictures on here. So you just use this just like paper. You would print a picture out on a piece off your computer. I went ahead and just went with black and white. You could do color if you like, and has all the instructions on the back on how to use your printer paper. And it's got a paper backing here. You can see. And then on the front, it's just fabric. So it just feeds through your printer, just like a normal piece of paper would. And after you're done printing, then you just tear off the backing and you're just ready to go from there. And you can use it on all kinds of different projects but for this one, we're using it for the wall hanging. So after I did that, I went ahead and I went and I used some adhesive. And there's many different kinds that you can use. You can get it at any fabric store or craft store, if you will. And I just placed my fabrics on here, like so. And I ironed it. You'll wanna be careful because if you get this stuff on your iron, it makes kind of a mess. So there's Teflon papers that you can buy from, again, a craft store, and that will save your iron. So all the sticky stuff will get on that and not your iron. So go ahead and do that. And then you just peel off the backing and it makes kinda. You'll see on the back of these. Can you see that? It's like a shiny adhesive. And then you just go ahead and place it here, however you like and get creative with it. And don't worry about these creases because they'll, or, you know, there's a little bit of bubbles here you can see. Don't worry about that. 'Cause those will come out as you iron. So you'll wanna just place them how you want. And I like asymmetry 'cause that's my mind. I'm not a math mind. Or maybe I am. I don't know. I just like kind of funky. So I'm just gonna bring it over to my iron and I'm gonna press it. I'm not going to rub my iron. I'm just gonna press and I'm not gonna use steam either. So here we go. Let's press it on here. Just for a few seconds. And there's instructions as well on those pieces of paper that come with the rolls of your adhesive that you can buy in the stores. And you can also get them in packages up on the notions wall. And there. It's warming up. There we go. Just press that. That one. And on this wall hanging, I used, I have a backing on here of just some cotton fabric and I also use some fusible fleece. So that it gives it just some kind of texture. So, but you could use any kind of like quilting, quilting batting if you like. Whatever you have on hand. So I'm gonna show that to you here. So here's my backing. And then there's some fusible fleece here that I've already fused on there. And that just kinda. It's nice to work with 'cause it's fused and you don't have to worry about shifting. But if it shifts, then you just cut it off. It makes it easy. So I'm just gonna pin these here and then I'm going to move over to the machine and I'm gonna start my decorative stitches down here. Let's put a couple pins there. And for this, it's kinda nice to use your decorative stitches on your machine that you don't usually use. 'Cause it's kinda fun to play with and you get to use some colorful fabric too, 'cause it's all about color. There we go. And I like to use different colors for every frame that I sew, 'cause it just adds even more interest to the wall hanging. More creativity. And I like for, these ones, 'cause it's got my boys on it. I like to use their favorite colors. 'Cause they like that They see pictures of themselves and they see their favorite colors around their pictures. And another tip you might wanna use. You could use a quilting needle to go through. 'Cause it's kind of a little bit of a thicker pile. There. So up. I have a completed piece. See, isn't that pretty? So. I went ahead and completed it all on another piece here. So I've used four different of my decorative stitches and I just love being able to use these on these wall hangings. It just adds so much interest to it. So, but now what we're gonna do is we're going to free motion and fill up some of this space with some free motion stitching. So I'm going to switch my foot out. Here's my free-motion foot. Every machine has different. Your free-motion foot might not look like my free-motion foot. So you'll wanna check with your machine and some come with them and some do not. So you can purchase them if yours does not I'm just gonna switch it out and I'm using a rayon thread. I'm not using cotton thread. It just gives it an extra little sheen to the project. Gives that little, like I said, sheen.. It's not so, it's not as dull as cotton thread would be. And so I kinda like that extra added interest. So, and I'm going to drop my feed dogs. And here we go. My machine talks to me. All right. So here we go. And with free motion, it's kinda tricky and you might wanna play with it a little bit and I have been known to not be perfect on my free motion so. But we're just gonna play. And this is what it's about is playing and being creative and not being perfect. All right. Getting a little fancy. All right. So I did that and I think maybe I'll do a little triangle or something over here. And, again, you can switch out your thread colors to whatever you like. This kind of sewing makes me, just kinda renews my excitement about sewing because it is kinda fun and it's artistic and. Gets my creative juices going, so. So here we go. So there's some, and then, I mean you can even get your free motion stitches going in here as well. You know, get some stars going. Actually we can do a star. Let's do that. Since we're here, right? You can go over and over and over it. Little boys like stars and I can't draw a train with free motion, so I'm not gonna do a train. All right. See, there we go. So, and another way to embellish your wall hanging is with buttons or with yarn or whatever. We have, I brought some. Love Raku pottery, and I've got some of these Raku, raccoon, Raku. I guess they're pendants. And you could just hand stitch those on wherever you like. And then I also brought some buttons that you could use to change it up. Like this. We could put a button there, button there, button there. I mean, it's really limitless as far as what your wall hanging could look like. And then you could also take some fabric or some yarn and you could even go around here. And sew some yarn, just using a zigzag stitch and sew some yarn on here. And make it kind of fun. So, and what I like to do to finish off my edge, to make it really easy and make it look kind of finished. 'Cause I'm not gonna bind it. Is I could use, I'm going to use some yarn. And this is, again, auditioning yarn for your piece. So I could look here and say. Yeah, I like that. Then I could use this white on the other side and look at that and see what I like best. I kinda like them both. So I could even use both of them. It's really up to you what you wanna use. And, again, what I would do is go along with the zigzag stitch and just zigzag it all the way around and just secure the yarn onto the wall hanging. And to secure it or to hang it, I made this little piece of, a little wire dealio that you could hand stitch on top. Just set it here and then you can just hand stitch it to the top of there. And, I mean, the hand stitching would be hidden even. There we go. See, how cool is that? There. Or you could use clear thumb tacks like I do. But that's being a little bit too honest, I think. There we go. So there we are. We have a wall hanging that can be completely made to your liking, to your home. I also wanted to give you a little tip. I've got some pictures. I didn't wanna. I've got some pictures of my boys. You can take one picture and you can take little pieces of the picture and crop them and do a wall hanging out of just one photo. So you could take, aren't they cute? Take his picture, take his face, crop it, make it a single picture and put it over here, say. And then take his face and put it over here and make another wall hanging, a full wall hanging using the three pictures or what have you. So this is another example of one photo that you could take and make multiple photos where you could just crop it and make one wall hanging out of one picture. You could have the full picture and then just take some, you know, the wheel and maybe this little barrel and maybe make a Z whatever you like. You can, you know just get artistic with it. And I mean, it's your own. It's gonna hang in your house or maybe you can make it for a gift. So I wanted to show you this one wall hanging that I made a little while ago. It's got my family on it. And, as you can see, I embellished it with different pendants. And I think they're actually necklace pendants. But that's where you can, you know, you just go to the craft store and you can go into different areas, different departments, and just find different things and put them on your wall hanging. So, and I also took a picture, a strip. This is the boys when they were so little and we're at the Grand Canyon and we're on a horse. And here you can see I did some free motion stitching in the framed areas. And I used some variegated thread here. I did some stars here, triangles. And then I embellished it with the yarn on the outside here. And I didn't even use matching thread. I'm a rebel. But it's my own. I got creative with it and I just love it. And so that's what I'm encouraging you to do. Just be free with it. Make it your own. And if it's not perfect the first time, excellent, good for you. So have fun with it and happy creating.