I have been using an Epson Stylus D88 inkjet printer to print my quilt labels. The reason for choosing this printer was the DURABrite Ultra pigment ink, which according to the manufacturer “provides the water, smudge, and light resistance”. I haven’t had any problems with the quality of the printing, but I have had the paper chewed up by the printer on more than one occasion. I use an A4 sheet of freezer paper that I cut myself from the roll and then iron on a slightly smaller than A4 piece of pfd cotton fabric. This then gets fed into the printer. The design of the printer is such that it is extremely difficult to remove the jammed paper and costs a lot of frayed nerves – both mine and those of my personal system administrator!
What is most annoying though is that the printer is “intelligent” and thinks it knows when the ink is used up. It then refuses point blank to print anything. Last week it forced me to replace and throw away all 4 ink cartridges that were still half full because they were “empty”. I don’t use the printer all that much, so sometimes months go by before I want to print something again. I don’t know if this contributes to the darned thing thinking the cartridges are empty or whether it is just another way of getting more money out of you. The printer itself wasn’t too expensive, but the ink cartridges are – when I only get to use half the ink they contain, which in my case was equivalent to about 20 pages. A set of 4 Epson cartridges costs €31.
We also have an HP Color Laserjet 2550L colour printer. It gets used almost as infrequently, as we don’t do a lot of colour printing. I did use that printer for any colour printing I did during my C&G course and we only had to replace the yellow toner cartridge once in about 3 years. It is still going strong now. It is also less prone to paper jams – I can’t actually remember if we have ever had one. The toner cartridges for the laser printer aren’t cheap either, but each cartridge is supposed to print 5000 pages. Colour cartridges cost €85 each, black is slightly cheaper.
So I am doing a little experiment. I have printed the same image onto 2 pieces of cotton using the laser printer and the inkjet printer. I am going to throw them in the washing machine each week when I do the washing and see how the colours hold up. Then based on these results one or other of the printers will go. We really don’t need 2 colour printers in the house – along with a B&W laser printer.
I have been looking at the works of Andy Warhol recently as part of some research for a new piece of textile art. As these are colourful and I had one to hand I used it for my experiment. The artwork is not mine.
Here are the two pieces straight from the printer. The laser printer piece I ironed as I thought it may help to fix the colour to the fabric. (Laser printing is based on heat being applied to fix the toner particles to the paper or in my case cloth.) The laser printer produces slightly darker images on cloth and they seem to be somewhat sharper too.
Left laser print, right inkjet
Watch this blog for the results of my experiment in the coming weeks.
I shall await the outcome eagerly as I was only thinking last night about buying a printer specifically for printing onto fabric in my soon to be new studio.
Helen, I’ve been following your blog and have seen that you are in the process of moving too. Hope all goes well and that you get your studio at the bottom of the garden. I know all about buying magazines on interior design etc. The only problem is that all those houses are really palaces and the rooms much bigger than the ones we are having built. Still it costs nothing to dream and there are some good ideas that can be translated into a smaller scale.
Thanks for the information on printing quilt labels. I was looking for some real life experience and came across your blog. I am going to try it out on my HP Laser in the next week or so.