I make things.  Whether it’s a set of drapes for my family room (which, btw, I do not enjoy doing) or a very small dress, or a box to store stuff in, it’s what I do.  Sometimes it doesn’t make sense.  I admit that.  Sometimes it would be the wiser thing, the more cost effective thing, to just buy something already made.  But that would be easy…  I would be cheating myself of the experience of learning how to do something….I mean, why spend $25 to buy a set of custom made labels when I could spend two days and $30 doing it myself?  So that’s what I decided to do. I would make labels to sew into the tiny clothes I make…

Now lots of other, wiser, more clever people on the inter-webs have given brilliant, step by step instructions on how to make sew in labels.  Make a document with your words and design, flip it if you need to (my printer actually will do this for me….I had no idea…) and print it out on iron on transfer paper (by the way, I just used the paper you can use to make t-shirt transfers).  Here’s where I made a mistake.  I didn’t read the iron on directions.  The manufacturer says to WAIT 30 minutes to let the paper dry before proceeding to the next step.  It turns out that waiting is a good idea.  If your paper tells you to do that, do that.

After letting it dry, you can cut your labels apart in a way that would make it fast to iron on to the ribbon or material of choice.  Let me just say that I chose to use ribbon for my labels.  I actually tried using fabric and it was great.  The transfer seems to prevent the fabric from raveling when you cut it out.  I might make a batch of fabric labels some day.  Could be really cute…

Anyway, I used this 5/8″ wide ribbon by May Arts.  It has the feel of a cotton ribbon, but it is polyester.  It also comes in same awesome colors.  Yes, I did make some pink labels.  But I didn’t have the light pink color I really should have for this project….Might need to make another order…

Here’s another example of things not going so well.  The transfer paper wasn’t adhering consistently to the material.  I had lots of thoughts about this.  Maybe I was using an iron that wasn’t hot enough.  Maybe it was too hot.  Maybe the iron transfers were at fault.  After reading and re-reading the actual directions and trying over and over again, I decided to buy new transfer paper.  Here’s an interesting thing, though.  When I went back to the ironing board, my iron wouldn’t work anymore.  It DIED.  It wouldn’t turn on!  Was it going crazy all along?  Was it over-heating and under-heating the whole time and causing this nightmare?  I’ve never heard of an iron just NOT working anymore, but that’s what happened.  So I borrowed my husband’s iron (yes, he has his own iron….former military guy who irons his own dress shirts better than anybody, thank you very much) and everything fell into place.  Labels perfectly adhered to ribbon!  Yay!

And this is what they look like, folded in half, and stitched into a tiny seam.

Here is the back side of the label.  A little heart.  Because everything is made with love.

Thank you for looking and if you end up making your own labels, have fun!  Or maybe it would be nice to find one of those nice shops on etsy that will make your labels for you at a very reasonable price!