printing on felt?

Question

i want to print on felt - any ideas? (i'm guessing you can't just stick felt in the printer, so can it be done any other way?)

Answer 1

The only method I'm aware of that will put an image onto felt is silk screening (silkscreen inks forced through a very fine silk mask for each color). Uses a very viscous ink (very thickly paint like) that lays the color onto the surface (dries like paint on the surface - rough and unpleasant in the hand).

Anything that sinks in will wick away and melt into the felt itself (also this would be staining not permanent and you can't "dye" a figurative method into the felt). Dyeing wool (the fiber of felt) requires specific dyes and method as well as heat and timing (temps in excess of 200 degrees f. held for nearly 30 minutes consistently). Properly done this is permanent.

You might want to consider needle felting though. You can use yarns as well as unspun fibers and "punch" felt them into a good quality wool (*NOT* synthetic or partially synthetic - needle felting will shred that..) felt. This would be a permanent method on felt.

Tee shirt companies that print can do silk screening on felt (prepare the screens and print the colors). Think of the logos you see on ball caps... Unless they're sewn on chances are good they're silk screened into place. Some are thermal appliques (generally plastic or plastic ilk) , but they're usually more expensive to do. Thermal applique is the province of the high end manufacturer usually. Too expensive to do in smaller operations or short runs.

Answer 2

Printing On Felt

Answer 3

I knit. and one thing I do as well, is needlefelting. If you have any kind of talent with drawing, this will be fun for you!
check out this sight for some instructions and pictures
http://gfwsheep.com/needlefelting/needlefelt1.html

This one will help alot too. It will give you an idea of what you could do with needlefelting.
http://www.betzwhite.com/blog/2006/08/needle-felting-new-tool.html

I've just recently learned how to do needlefelting. It's pretty fun.

What happens is you have a piece of felt, or in my case, something that i knitted, and then you get some "roving" from a craft or yarn store. Roving is basically a chunk of wool that hasn't been made into yarn yet, and can come in just about any colro. and you buy felting needles. Which are barbed. You can lay the chunks of roving on top of the felt and jab them into the shape of whatever the picture is. Because the needles you are using are barbed, is basically meshes the roving into the felt so that you can actually make an entire picture on it.

Good luck and hope this helped!

Answer 4

You could try stamping or roller-printing. Felt doesn't take ink or paints very well because the surface moves around and breaks off.

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Answer 5

dont do it bvecause i just tryed it but i have 2 printers but when i tried it on 1 it smoked and yes it came out well but when i tried print somthing on regular paper it was smoking DONT TRY THIS
UNLESS YOU WANT