Print my own fabric

I posted about how to print on fabric before (original idea is from Creativity Exchange) and, because i was a bit skeptical whether it would work, i didnt really think about how to utilise it. I've also been searching for some better neutral (ie not cats or flowers a or cupcakes etc) patterned fabrics recently (can you see where this is going...). I see so many gorgeous fabrics on people's blogs but the majority are from the US so its not really practical to buy them. Ive found a few good online stores, and Ebay is of course an excellent source of most stuff, but i do like touching the fabric before i buy it. Which got me thinking 'is it possible to make my own?'

So I designed a basic flying bird pattern just using the shapes available in Microsoft word to try out. I cut out an A4 sheet of freezer paper, cut my fabric to match and then ironed them together. 

 Then I put the fabric through my inkjet printer.

For a first proper attempt i think it worked well. Theres 3 issues though. Firstly ive no idea why i didnt make my pattern a whole A4 page, i must have been interupted when i was doing it, i also need to remove the margins. Secondly there's some nasty black smudges at the top. My printer is pretty old so im hoping its nothing a good clean of the rollers wont fix. But third, and most crucial, the printer ink isnt waterproof as far as i can tell. I know you can buy waterproof printer ink but its expensive and, as i use my printer for normal printing too i'm not keen on swapping to it. I could potentially buy a separate printer but i'm not keen on spending money on this idea until im more confident with it. So further planning is required to get this to work...

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