Printing Fabric on a Home Inkjet Printer

June 25, 2025

Yes, you can print fabric at home on your inkjet printer. I’ve made a short video showing printing fabric on the printer I have at home with a few tips for success.

Top tip: Take out ALL the paper from your tray if you don’t have a rear feed option on your printer. Then insert one sheet of paper backed fabric. I never had the fabric jam when I did this for all the years my home HP printer only had a tray to feed paper.

Do you need pre-treated fabric for your printer? Probably.

Most likely, you have a dye ink printer at home unless you know you purchased a pigment ink printer. For dye ink printers you need to use fabric pre-treated for printing. Why? Because fabric and dye ink are the same charge. Remember from chemistry that opposites attract. That means the fabric needs to be treated to “bond” with the dye ink.

This is not PFD (prepared for dyeing) fabric. PFD fabrics just have no optic whiteners or any sizing, starches, or finishes that could interfere with the dye. You can either buy commercially prepared, paper backed sheets of fabric, or you can create your own treated fabric with Jenkins Bubble Jet Set.

Years ago, I tested all the major brands of pre-treated paper backed fabric and found the Jacquard Inkjet Printable Cotton Fabric printed with the best color and turned out to be the least expensive too. This is the printable fabric I still use today. I originally discovered the Jacquard brand at dickblick.com but you can also find these fabric sheets at Amazon.com.

For pigment ink printers you don’t need to use pre-treated fabric since the ink sits “on top” of the fabric. But when I had a home pigment printer, I did use the Jacquard fabric sheets since they were already paper backed and convenient to use.

Note: Do not use a laser printer unless you want to permanently adhere the fabric to the paper backing. I had a student confirm this is what happens 😊

Video link: