How (not) to Make Printed Ribbon

I was put in a pinch today to make a ribbon blanket with New York Jet's ribbon on it. I had tried the photo transfer paper but when I washed the blanket the image separated from the ribbon. On a mission to find a better way I searched Pinterest and the internet.

After many experiments I ended up going back to the photo transfer paper and determined it would hold better if the ribbon wasn't washed for awhile. I am not completely satisfied but it HAD to be done today.

Here are my experiments gone wrong:

I didn't have a problem printing with my inkjet printed onto the ribbon. However I could not get the image to stay on the ribbon without running when it got wet.

In some ways this is a successful tutorial if you don't plan on washing the ribbon or if the colors printed are all black, it just didn't help me today.

Printing on Ribbon

To print on ribbon you start by printing the image on paper.

 Cut your ribbon to size.

 Then tape them down to the paper. Double sided tape is great but I didn't have it on hand so I just did two of the classic tape loops under the ribbon and then taped down the ends so it would feed into the printer nicely.

 Make sure to stick the paper in the same way. Mine is face down with the top to the left. Also adjust your printer settings for the highest quality print. You now have printed ribbon. Wait for it to dry and you can use this in scrapbooking, gifts, and anything else that doesn't get wet. You can see that mine smeared a little on the edges but I only need 3 1/2" sections so I wasn't really concerned about the ends. If you are more careful taping it won't smear.

So how to seal it so it can get wet? The first suggestion I found was to iron it to seal it. This seemed to have a small effect, but not good enough. Then I tried the idea of soaking it in white vinegar.

 This kind of worked, however it pulled out all of the green ink and left it gray, but it is waterproof. A small success! I really wanted some color though. On to the next attempt.

 

PinSupplies.com sells some fabric Mod Podge that is used to stick fabric to fabric. I thought this would be a brilliant idea since Mod Podge is used to seal so many things. However it was a complete failure. The green ink bled everywhere even when I just blotted it on. I did not try this on the iron sealed ribbon though, so maybe that would work. 

 

This glue is very handy for other fabric projects but unfortunately not this one.

 You can see the green starting to smear here, it got a LOT worse as it dried.

I am rather impatient and needed these ribbons today, but I am curious if I had allowed the ribbon to dry overnight if these methods would have worked. I will have to attempt that tonight for future reference. I would love to be able to print my own washable ribbon.