Timeless Treasures

Some things age in one world, but never age in another. Some people grow older with each and every birthday, but others somehow keep their inner spark and stay vibrant within.

My dear MIL turned 92 yesterday. I spent the day planning and wrapping an abundance of birthday gifts and the evening showering her with them.

There are those who feel as we age, that we need less...but in reality we truly need more. We need more love, more affection, more attention and yes, even more gifts.

The inner spirit, our spark, our true nature, is timeless even though our physical dimension does show the wear and tear of this lifetime. My mother-in-law has outlived both of the two men she dearly loved and now lives alone.

In May, she fell and fractured her pelvis and one hip joint is more than half-way eroded away by osteo-arthritis. She walks with difficulty and with a great deal of pain...haltingly using a walker.

But while her gait is impaired, her memory is not. While her losses are many, she can still see all that she still has and see it sharply and well.

She is fiercely proud and fights to maintain every single moment of her treasured independence. She spent three weeks hospitalized and in a nursing home with the pelvic fracture and never wants to go back again. So we fight the good fight with her. We help as we can, we give as we can, we cheer as we can, and we treasure all that we can.

Like this quilt she made for me 35 years ago, she is timeless. Like all that we love and treasure, we keep them close to us, we enjoy them and we never forget what a priceless gift they truly are to us.

shown:
1. Dorothy, age 92, sombrero'ed and serenaded at Ixtapa after birthday burritos, beans and rice but before the cake and ice cream
2. Dorothy's quilt gifted to me 35 years ago and one of the 5 I love to sleep under
Both are timeless treasures...

Out of Time and Into Space

And like the snow falls in the river, A moment white--then melts forever."
Robert Burns

I flew across time and through multiple layers of space. I looked upon the rivers, and the glaciers and the beautiful mountains of Alaska below. I knew that one life, left behind, was now merging with the one life, past. And as I flew, not only space was changing...but time was changing, too.

We lose an hour, gain an hour, and we are still the same, yet somehow still, subtly different. I was now becoming fully present, in a new moment in my new merged life. It's a challenge to go from space where one worked so hard and with so many challenges back into another world with similar deadlines and challenges there, as well.

I looked down through the darkness from my airplane window, and it was so very, very lovely. I came from snow and I returned to snow. Yet strangely enough, my own Oregon home lay in a respite spot of green grass and windblown dying leaves. Not yet time for the new growth of Spring, but time to finish up the business of Winter, now and past.

I came home to the unpacking of my Alaskan memories, the intercepting phone calls layered upon one another and the knowledge that it was time to finish up all of the unfinished lists and finally go into my sewing room. How comforting to see the safe and familiar. How lovely to see the magic of colors and textures. How wonderful to dream and vision lovely things to create anew.

I'm home again. A different home, a different place, but still my home. I looked around through all of the layers of time and space and dreamed of flying free.

The Heart of Alaska

When the famous cultural anthropologist, Joseph Campbell, told us that we should 'follow our bliss' those words resounded in me and mirrored the journey of a lifetime. I left my home state of Alaska in 1968. I had graduated from Juneau-Douglas High School with honors and I had bright hopes and many dreams.

I was a member of a large pioneer Alaskan family, my grandfather a talented mural artist and fine carpenter-craftsman-inventor who came from Finland to mine for gold.  With my grandmother, who also immigrated from Finland, only a year later... and had not yet met him, they met, married and raised nine children, Without exception, all the progeny that survived harsh conditions, accidents, and disease over the decades were all amazing artists, poets, and craftsmen, as well.

My father was born and raised on Douglas Island, one of 11 children who learned to fish, to hunt, and to live off the land. He journeyed 5,000 miles to win the heart and then marry his Cajun French penpal in Louisiana.

I was the first of 5 children and the only daughter. I was taught to dream big and work hard to make those dreams come true. I set off for Oregon and Oregon State University , long before computers were invented, and selecting colleges to apply to from an outdated college catalog. I desperately wanted to attend the University of Washington, where I had received a scholarship my junior year to study journalism. Unfortunately, their quotas were full, so I selected Oregon State University, believing that two close friends would also be there.  I majored in the Arts..Liberal and Fine and ended up with a teaching degree in English Literature, Creative Writing with a certificate in Teaching Education and the hopes of making a difference in the lives of others. I taught school at many levels, as a paid college teaching assistant at Oregon State University where I took over several different classes for a top English professor who took time off to write a book, as a young student teacher in the school district of Corvallis, where I was simply handed over another 3 classes and winged them on my own, and then as a substitute teacher in Salem, and a parent volunteer who ended up teaching many, many classes without pay to make up for curriculum funding deficits.

I was offered the chance to research and 'ghost write' a book for that college professor, offered a teaching position 'on the spot' after a challenging experience with difficult parents at school where even the principal wouldn't deal with them, and chances to teach and to run various other programs. I often turned them down and I never knew why. I preferred to work and to learn on my own...my own way...and always, to volunteer...decades and decades I have helped others and taught classes from college, community college, high school, elementary school, and community school programs.

I learned that one's passions and one's dreams are often different that those we think we have. That sometimes being out in the world and its pursuits are very, very different from the dreams and depths of each of our own inner worlds and the riches and the true treasures that lie within.

I have spent my lifetime both teaching and helping others. I am proud to be a life long learner but even prouder to be a life long volunteer. I have given of myself, my time, and my talents to 17 schools, 5 theatre programs and endless charities. My journey seems to be about education and about using words and language, expression and symbols....to share, to teach, to learn and to enrich... not just my own life...but hopefully, others lives, as well.

But it is here, coming back 'home' to Alaska, that I remember, truly remember, the depths of my own true heart. I found it...as I have always found it...working with children. The children of this world are the true keepers of the heart's joy, the heart's energy and the heart's future hope and promise. Without them, we have no future.

So, today...my last full day in Alaska as I board a plane tomorrow to return to Salem, I will spend it remembering, and connecting to that mystical, magical, energetic and powerfully magnetic heart. If things go well, I will return to that magical classroom for one last kuspuk party. We shall all dress up, sip tea, eat crackers and play checkers and other board games.

I will look at those games as simply examples of our lives. The playing pieces of checkers are the black and white playing pieces of our polarities. The contest of 'winning' simply another form of the endless and often mindless striving of competition and battle turned into sport.

But I will choose to see it differently. To laugh and to see the games within that each of us plays with the other. I will see behind the surface of this world and all of its illusions to the true universal world of spirit within.

And I show here, my beautiful Sarah...a precious little girl who was one of 15 other precious little children in my sister-in-law Paula Savikko's 2nd grade classroom. Making 15 kuspuks and giving of my own 25 hours of sewing time making kuspuks was not truly about sewing.

It was not about making the front page or the classroom or having them return to make a video of the class singing and dancing the Yu'pik way with Cultural Instructor, Theresa John. Classroom teacher Paula Savikko has now received a cultural grant based on our project of using 'Non Standard Measurements' as we made the kuspuks the original Yu'pik way. And that is exciting and that is wonderful, as well.

These are all dear and special achievements and ones that carry meaning and symbolism. But they carry much more than that in their experiencing and my experience with them. It was about creating and bonding the scraps and the pieces, the threads and the seams of my own life.

And so, little Sarah...who drew this heart for me to symbolize the words that she could not say, gave to me...as did all of the others....a piece of their hearts and as I leave I take those beautiful and precious little pieces with me.

And I leave behind, an equally beautiful, equally precious, piece of mine. Alaska is my heart...as I am hers. I carry pieces of that heart with me today as I walk to school in the freshly fallen snow, I carry it tomorrow when I board the plane and look out that airplane window down to this beloved land, and I carry it, always and forever, within.

How to Make a Kuspuk Links:
How to make a kuspuk
Kuspuks Make Front Page News
Juneau Empire Photos: Parka party 01/18/08
Fun But Frenzied Frugality: Sewing Kuspuks Again!
Juneau Empire Kuspuk Project video

Links to Making Kuspuks in 2009
Fun But Frenzied Frugality: Sewing Kuspuks Again!
Kuspuks and Friday Finishes

Kuspuks Make Front Page News

Our Gastineau Elementary School project of Making Kuspuks, with Yup'ik Eskimo cultural instructor, Theresa John, and second grade teacher Paula Savikko, of Douglas, Alaska made the Juneau Daily Empire's front page news.

News reporter, Brian Wallace, of Juneau came in and spent a half an hour with us profiling the children's efforts and how we used non-standard math measurements to rip out the kuspuk(also quaspeg or qaspeg,all pronounced 'cuss-puck' ) patterns the original Yup'ik or native Eskimo way. Photos were taken of children being measured, showing how they ripped fabric pieces to size based on these physical measurements and then sewing the kuspuks pieces together, with the help of volunteers. We were delighted to discover that not only did we make the news but were placed on the front page with large photos.

Archived link: Photos: Parka party 01/18/08

Note 2018 Updated YouTube link as newspaper site is no longer archived and avaulable.

Making Kuspuks
https://youtu.be/DwN9bj5DFbghttps://youtu.be/DwN9bj5DFbg
(via www.with-heart-and-hands) 

The following day, a Juneau Empire videographer joined us. She video taped the class, all of the children now wearing their own newly created kuspuks, as we were rejoined by Theresa John, our gifted Yupik Eskimo cultural student, teacher, and doctoral candidate from the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. Theresa led us in Yupik song and dance, this time we were all wearing our completed kuspuks and we performed the dance several times to the delight of the children, as well as the visitors. The link will be available, online, in the Juneau Empire video archives.

The children dearly loved the entire experience and we celebrated afterwards with small cups of chamomile tea and graham crackers. Perhaps, not culturally traditional, but certainly appreciated and enjoyed!

Kuspuks are done! Such fun, a lot of work and many, many rewards!
How to make a kuspuk
Kuspuks Make Front Page News
Juneau Empire Photos: Parka party 01/18/08
video


 Links to Making Kuspuks in 2009
Fun But Frenzied Frugality: Sewing Kuspuks Again!
Kuspuks and Friday Finishes

Making Kuspuks

I have been privileged to work all this week with award-winning teacher, Paula Savikko, and her second grade class at Gastineau Elementary School in Douglas, Alaska. I have been as equally privileged to witness the extra-ordinary gifts of Yup'ik Cultural Instructor, Theresa John, as she shared her knowledge of the Yup'ik Eskimos of Nelson Island and their traditions from the Tooksok Bay area of western Alaska.

Theresa is a doctoral candidate at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks and a gifted teacher, versed in the traditional arts of song and native dance of the Yupiks and their rich cultural heritage. She taught the class words in Yupik and described how different the original culture was from ours today. She did an amazing job of working with the children and teaching them Yupik terminology, history and geography. With word, song and dance she created a magical learning experience for all of us and one that I felt truly blessed to experience.

Theresa also taught us all how to make kuspuks. A kuspuk is a traditional native Alaskan garment, usually made of cotton fabric that is worn over a fur parka in the winter, and as an outdoor garment in the summer...over pants, leggings or jeans.

 Creating a kuspuk (alternate spellings: quaspeg, qaspeg, quspug...all pronounced 'cuss-puck') in the original native Yupik way, involves simply measuring the body from armpit to armpit (across the rounding of the chest) and ripping off this width. (scissors needed for that first cut on our modern fabric with selvages on the sides!)

Using this piece we then measured it from neck to hem length and ripped that off to size. We followed with ripping sleeve lengths by widths and hood lengths and widths to sizing of the head followed by adding a skirt section for the girls(double the width of the body) and a pocket as pictured, for all.

Using more traditional sewing methods, we shaped hoods or pocket pieces as needed. Diagrams are pictured here for those looking for directions or a free kuspuk pattern. Click on them to go to their site, click again to enlarge with the magnifying glass, right click to download and save for your use!

Each day, students would sew with the help of myself or another volunteer. The students pinned pieces together, were taught the basics mechanics of a sewing machine and showed how to feed the fabric under the feed dogs and how to hold it as the machine sewed with the help of an adult's foot on the power pedal. They were delighted with this unique opportunity and truly loved being able to sew, especially something that they were so personally involved with from start to finish.

Rick rack trim was added to the pockets, the cuffs and (if desired) to the bottom section of the body of the girl's kuspuks. The boys' kuspuks, by tradition, are kept in neutral, plain fabrics and not adorned with rickrack. The girls' kuspuks are usually made with bright colored calicos and adorned with rickrack or embroidery trims on edges of pockets and sleeves. Each kuspuk (made from start to finish) takes about 4 hours to make.

The joy of creation coupled with the delight of the children makes the time spent not only worthwhile...but truly fun! These were experiences, as well as wonderful children, that I will remember forever and I am deeply grateful to have been a part of this unique experience!

My other links:

How to make a kuspuk

Juneau Empire newspaper link is no longer available on their site, but here is the youtube video taken that day:
Creating Kuspuks with Theresa John and classroom teacher, Paula Savikko at Gastinesu Elementary School, Douglas Island, Alaska.

2018 Update:
Gastineau Elementary is now officially called "Saye'ik Gastineau".

Kuspuks Make Front Page News

Juneau Empire Photos: Parka party 01/18/08

Fun But Frenzied Frugality: Sewing Kuspuks Again!

video

Links to Making Kuspuks in 2009
Fun But Frenzied Frugality: Sewing Kuspuks Again!
Kuspuks and Friday Finishes

Search engine links for this article:

How to make a kuspukKuspuks Make Front Page News
Juneau Empire Photos: Parka party 01/18/08
video

Note 2018 Updated YouTube link as newspaper site is no longer archived and avaulable.

Making Kuspuks
https://youtu.be/DwN9bj5DFbghttps://youtu.be/DwN9bj5DFbg
(via www.with-heart-and-hands)

The following day, a Juneau Empire videographer joined us. She video taped the class, all of the children now wearing their own newly created kuspuks, as we were rejoined by Theresa John, our gifted Yupik Eskimo cultural student, teacher, and doctoral candidate from the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. Theresa led us in Yupik song and dance, this time we were all wearing our completed kuspuks and we performed the dance several times to the delight of the children, as well as the visitors. The link will be available, online, in the Juneau Empire video archives.

The children dearly loved the entire experience and we celebrated afterwards with small cups of chamomile tea and graham crackers. Perhaps, not culturally traditional, but certainly appreciated and enjoyed!

Kuspuks are done! Such fun, a lot of work and many, many rewards!
How to make a kuspuk
Kuspuks Make Front Page News
Juneau Empire Photos: Parka party 01/18/08
video


 Links to Making Kuspuks in 2009
Fun But Frenzied Frugality: Sewing Kuspuks Again!
Kuspuks and Friday Finishes

Michele Bilyeu blogs With Heart and Hands as she shares a quilting journey through her life in Salem, Oregon and Douglas, Alaska. Sewing, quilting, and wildcrafting, with small format art quilts, prayer flags, and comfort quilts for a variety of charitable programs. And best of all, sharing thousands of links to Free Quilt and Quilt Block Patterns and encouraging others to join her and make and donate quilts to charitable causes.   Help us change the world, one little quilt at a time!

Busman's Holiday

 busman's holiday:

noun. Informal.
A vacation during which one engages in activity that is similar to one's usual work. The term alludes to a bus driver spending his day off taking a long bus ride. [Late 1800's]

My 'vacations' are almost all 'busman's holidays.' Although I dearly love coming 'home' to Alaska and being with my 82 year old mother and 91 year old father, my brothers, sister-in-laws, nieces and nephews, I still work as hard, if not harder than I do while at home in Salem, Oregon.

My parents live in a very large old house. It's upkeep is more than they can manage and they are delighted to be able to share in that upkeep by saving large chunks of its care for me ;) My first day here, I did 7 loads of laundry, cleaned three bathrooms, mopped the floors, dusted and vacuumed. After a brief collapse in a chair with a cup of coffee, I made lunch, then dinner, then more coffee after coffee after coffee!

When I am not enjoying this busman's holiday, I am helping a sister-in-law in her second grade classroom at Gastineau Elementary school where we are busy helping 15 eight year olds make kuspuks. I love to sew and I dearly love working with children of all ages, so this is as much fun as it is work, but it is still my 'busman's holiday', as well.

A Kuspuk is a traditional native Alaskan garment, usually made of calico that is worn over a fur parka in the winter and as a outdoors garment, similar to a zipperless parka or a dress, in the summer. A kuspuk (from start to finish) takes about 4 hours to make. And we are making 15 kuspuks for all 15 children and we have been trying to make them, with the children actually helping pin the fabric and feed it into the machines, as we sit beside them using the power pedal and helping direct and guide both their hands and the fabric.

It's been lots of fun and a bit of a planning challenge. We are not using patterns as we are trying to make them the original 'Yupik" (western Alaskan Eskimos) way by simply ripping sections of fabric to size.

 My very first day of sewing ( my mother who has memory challenges) became so alarmed by my absence that she wanted to send my 91 year old father after me. When he refused, knowing I was busy and fine, she said she would drive and come and get me herself!

Now, keep in mind that not only is she 82, but she is legally blind. I was greatly relieved to return home without her driving assistance. As I told her later....'mom, how do you think I would have felt being the only child in school whose mother had to come and drive her home in the snow? Especially, when in a couple of years, I'll be 60 years old and you're already 82!" She laughed and laughed at that one, but still insisted that she could have done it!" I am eternally grateful that she did not ;)

Once a child, always a child...no matter how old you...or they... are. Once, you come home again, everything new stays the same. And perhaps that is the very charm of being a 'child' and enjoying the true comforts of feeling and being at one's childhood home!

Updated links!

How to make a kuspuk

Kuspuks Make Front Page News

Juneau Empire Photos: Parka party 01/18/08

Fun But Frenzied Frugality: Sewing Kuspuks Again!

video

 Links to Making Kuspuks in 2009
Fun But Frenzied Frugality: Sewing Kuspuks Again!
Kuspuks and Friday Finishes

Happy 91 in Douglas, Alaska

My father is 91 years young today. A pioneer Alaskan by birth, he grew up with his large Finnish family, here on Douglas Island, Alaska. Both of his parents emigrated from Finland in 1901 and raised a family of 11 children. My father learned to fish, to hunt, to raise vegetables, and to can all of this bounty. Other foods and store bought items had to be specially ordered from catalogs and shipped up on barges that took many months to arrive.

My father learned to make and to create all that he did not have and to make do, with what he did. He learned from his father to be a craftsman and self-taught man with many correspondence courses in everything from electrical engineering to photography to art courses to medical knowledge. He entered pre-med programs at the University of Washington and Tulane University in New Orleans...the area where my Cajun French mother was from..his penpal whom he met, courted and married.

My father served in WWII as the skipper on a supply ship and watched as 4 more of his brothers also went off to join him at war. My grandparents were known as a 'Five Star' family...giving 5 sons to the cause. Four sons returned, one shot down as he piloted his plane to a safe landing where his men were rescued at sea.

Although he never was able to complete his college degree, his 3 years of hard college work and studying taught him to maintain an inquiring mind and a thirst for endless knowledge that continues today. He still reads books, magazines and a daily newspaper and watches the news and weather channel for continuing information on the world outside his Alaskan home.

Endlessly seeking alternative medicine's help in his caring for my mother who is legally blind, a fragile diabetic, and now facing the uncertain future of Alzheimer's, he works tirelessly to care for her...work that exhausts the rest of us, he is proud to be able to do. My wonderful parents are intelligent and witty people....with a sense of fun that creates interesting and endless stories that they constantly tell much to the delight of our families.

59 years later, they continue to live in our island home, a house which was originally my grandparents home, but burned to the ground in 1972. My parents have survived that housefire, the falling of a dry docked boat on one of my brothers (crushing him and requiring years of body casts and healing), the near death of another brother during surgery and the diagnosis 6 years ago of my own mother with inflammatory breast cancer.

Through all of this, my indomitable father has stood steadfast and strong. His Finnish ancestry and his own determination to keep going has brought him now to his own 91st birthday. We will celebrate with our large family all coming over for barbecued steak...his favorite. And believe it or not, the barbecue will most likely be out in the snow... followed by a big birthday cake and ice cream....inside, thank goodness!

It is snowing today, in days past the southeasterly winds have been blowing at 60+ m.p.h. But here in our home, it is warm and comfortable. I have decorated their house with homemade 'Happy Birthday' signs, a homemade crown, photos, cards and fabric covered presents. Others will be arriving bearing more gifts.

My dad is spending his 91st birthday using a snow blower to clear the driveway, and shoveling snow off of his car so that he can drive my 82 year old mother to the beauty parlor for a perm...just in time for his birthday party. "Make me beautiful' she is all set to tell the beautician...it's my husband's birthday gift!" She has this speech all planned out and we are already laughing over it.

It will be a good one. How can it not be? He is surrounded by love and who can beat barbequed steaks with a sprinkling of snowflakes and a beautiful wife with a brand new hairdo?

Alaska!

As this photo says without words.... "Alaska"....I'm there (or here) or maybe neither here nor there...however, I am now in Alaska!

Leaving early Wednesday morning after a drive from Salem to the Portland International Airport, I took off...first to Seattle, then home to Juneau. Unfortunately, I took off three different times, three different airplanes...all from the same airport.

My first plane idled on the runway for 30 minutes, taxied to take-off, had a failing engine light, returned to the airport and we all disembarked and returned to the terminal.

A second plane was brought from the hanger, we all had our tickets checked, got onboard, idled for 30 minutes, taxied down the runway, had ANOTHER faulty engine light on this 2nd airplane, returned to the airport...where we all disembarked...again!

A third plane was called, we all got our tickets checked, got on board and YES! took off for Seattle. Only now instead of my perfectly connecting 1 hour layover, non-stop flight from Seattle to Juneau...I got what is known in Alaska...as the 'milk run.' We stopped in Ketchikan and some passengers got off, some more got on...and Sitka, some passengers got off, some got on. It added 3 more hours to the flying time :(

My poor parents waited at the airport in Juneau and I didn't come in for another 6 1/2 hrs. after my scheduled arrival time. Luckily, they went home instead of waiting all that time...and my brother and my niece came for me at the new time!

Since then, well it's been a 'busman's holiday' but I did get to help 15 school children rip out patterns for 'kuspuks' and we will get to sew on them beginning tomorrow...at school where I will help out for a couple of hours a day.

Hopefully, I will also have better computing luck. My father's computer's video card went belly up, his keyboard malfunctioned and I am borrowing 'parts' put together to even type this in slow motion. My dad's tower, my brother's keyboard and my nephew's monitor :) This is the first day that I have had the use of a computer and happy to have the use of one !

More adventures to come.....
hugs, Michele

How to make a kuspuk

Kuspuks Make Front Page News

Juneau Empire Photos: Parka party 01/18/08

Fun But Frenzied Frugality: Sewing Kuspuks Again! 

video

 Links to Making Kuspuks in 2009
Fun But Frenzied Frugality: Sewing Kuspuks Again!
Kuspuks and Friday Finishes

Journeys

Every day is a journey, and the journey itself is home.
Matsuo Basho

packed:
only 6 outfts and 1 pair of shoes...suitcases filled with the birthday and wedding presents, 4 books, a camera, my journal, photos, and hand sewing supplies. Oh wait a minute...did I pack that cat?

Freezer Paper Photo ( or Labels) Transfer

1. Iron white or off-white fabric (muslin or cotton) until smooth

2. Iron freezer paper, shiny side to wrong side of fabric. The ironing melts the shiny wax coating and adheres it to the fabric.

3. Cut freezer paper-fabric to size, using an 8.5" x 11" piece of paper as guide

4. Two completed sheets of adhered freezer paper backed muslin ready for printing

5. Printer needs to be set to best or good quality ink level, then simply allow the freezer paper-fabric to feed through printing process of photos. I printed 4 photos off on one sheet of the paper-fabric, and my quilting labels off on the second sheet.

6. Completed set of photos, cut down to size needed for patchworking into a pillow. Peel off the paper backing as shown below before sewing. Although, I actually prefer to sew through the paper with my block seams and peel the backing paper off later for easier sewing with the very thin photo-fabric pieces.

7. My 'Quilting Journey' angel labels, with paper being peeled off

note:
I've used this technique many times and love the natural, somewhat faded look that I end up with. Compared to purchased photo transfer sheets (which end up with a plastic like top finish) or purchased fabric printer sheets (which are expensive) these are practically free and easy to make and use.

I use a pressing cloth to heat set the photos along the way and then heat set again on the finished project. I have even experimented with hand washing and had them survive. I wouldn't ever recommend washing any finished project using these, however!

If you want to insure washability, check out the variety of products available for pre-treating fabric. There are products like Bubble Jet Set to soak fabric in before printing and others like Bubble Jet Rinse or Set that can increase the chances of washability and decrease potential fading.

 Wedding Gift Pillow

Trouble Shooting Tips:
1. It is absolutely crucial that the raw edges be totally ironed to the fabric, or even extra glue stick or taped down for smooth printing.

2. The other thing to try is to double check and alter your paper settings if you get paper jams.
Depending on your own personal printer, this might be listed under 'printer properties' and then 'paper settings'. Make sure it is set to specialty papers or photo transfer papers...something special and thicker! With my computer/printer..the clicking order of commands is: control panel, printers and faxes, properties, set printer properties, general/set printer preferences, type is (box below size is)...switch to automatic and if that is not working select one of the others...say note card or photo transfer paper

3. Make sure to iron the transferred image REALLY well with a hot but not burning iron to set it! This does not make a permanently washable transfer but it makes an awfully good one and at almost no cost to you! For more a really good more permanent solution, if you do worry about that, use a simple clear sealer (spray outside and hold your breath ;) on labels or prints. It won't show if you use matte form, barely shows with glossy and is washable.


I've used this technique dozens and dozens of times, and almost all of the time it is flawless. Just get those settings to co-operate, adhere those edges (you can even tape the edges like a fold over seam if need be) and make sure to iron the transferred image REALLY well with a hot but not burning iron to set it! This does not make a permanently washable transfer but it makes an awfully good one and at almost no cost to you!


Other color setting options: (shown below, clear acrylic permanent spray on top)

From freezer paper photo transfer BubbleJet Set Instructions GENERAL INSTRUCTIONS Shake the Bubble Jet Set well & pour solution into flat pan. Saturate fabric in solution for 5 min. Hang dry till fabric is dry and stiff. Iron fabric to smooth side of the freezer paper. - *the shiny side* (cut to size to fit your printer - cut fabric slightly smaller so there is a border of paper around it - otherwise it could jam in your printer, normal paper size is 8 1/2" wide). Print on treated fabric & let sit for at least 30 min for best results. Handwash (or machine wash on a delicate cycle only) fabric in cold water and Bubble Jet Set Rinse or Synthrapol to remove any excess ink. Bubble Jet Set Rinse does have some additional "fixative" properties in addition to the detergent, and does seem to provide the best results. CAUTION: Use only on 100% cotton or 100% silk fabrics and DO NOT heat-set.

Resources for buying already prepared fabrics and a blog post which discusses them:

Inkjet Printing on fabric recommendations and age print comparison

Some of the places you can buy the recommended fabrics:

Dharmatrading

EQ Printables

Jacquard

Welsh Products

Morsbags: use same technique as explained above to make your own fabric labels and simply print them off of your inkjet (NOT laser...gets too hot) printer