Weddingbee Blog

Sorry y’all, I’m too frazzled now for cute titles. But I did want to not leave you hanging on the monogrammed totes. So cute title or not, we have spotted a tutorial!

First, you should gather all of your supplies. Here are mine:

Okay, there are some freeloaders in that shot, so let’s focus on the real supplies. Those are:

• Light fabric transfers for inkjet printers
• Mini totes
• an old pillow case
• an iron with absolutely no water inside because steam setting is supposedly the devil for this

I took the monogram and printed it up on the fabric transfers. Make sure you remember to reverse the image. Yes, it looks wrong. But I swear, it’s not.

Next, trim out the monogram as closely as you can get to the image border. The transfer leaves residue when you iron it on, even if you haven’t printed in the ironed area. That’s why you have to trim. It’s also why they recommend no “floating text.” If you don’t trim out every item, you’re going to end up with an unsatisfactory end product.

Then I prepped the pillow case by ironing it nice and flat, and also ironed the tote bag I was about to use. A tip about your ironing surface… don’t use your ironing board. You really want to be able to lean into the iron as you work with the transfer, so it helps if the surface is around waist height. I did this on my dining room table. Don’t worry, the pillowcase totally protected everything.

Place the shape to be transferred on the tote, printed side down. This is the step where the reversing is suddenly less scary.

Next, iron the darn thing! Make sure the transfer stays flat and that your really get the entire surface area. It helps the transfer to get into the fabric if you lean on the iron as you complete this step. Follow the instructions on your transfers for advice on how long you should iron it. Beware, you can burn the transfer. Although, for the record, I didn’t. Also, pay special attention to the edges because they are the part that will be most inclined to peel up.

When you finish ironing, remove the tote from the pillowcase and place it flat on another surface to cool. (Hint – It cools better if you get it off of the ironing surface. For real.) Leave it alone for two minutes.

After your two minutes is up? Peel back the paper…

… and voila!

I was kind of positive I was going to mess this up, but surprisingly I didn’t. I ended up making eight of these bad boys and they are all worthy of being passed on to our OOT guests. It turned out to be a fun little project with a really great result!

So would you consider this for your OOT bags? Or are you doing something completely different? Inquiring minds want to know.