Products Used
- Expressions Vinyl Inkjet Printable HTV
- Heat Transfer Source Black Matte HTV
- Men’s Fit Shirts
- Cricut EasyPress 2 6 inch by 7 inch
- Heat Transfer Source Tee Ruler in Adult
Baby Yoda…I mean Grogu!
Thank you to Cricut for having some awesome Mandalorian designs in Design Space! There were so many that I felt deserved to be made but managed to narrow it down to these three. Two Baby Yoda shirts were a print and cut design and the other is matte htv. I keep saying they are Baby Yoda shirts, but I guess I should instead call the Grogu shirts.
In the past, I have shared various htv projects, but they have been on towels from Ikea or on canvas. This is the first of shirts ever shared, so I started a new category for any future shirts. Hopefully doing so will encourage me to share more shirts made with everyone.
New Tool
As promised, I want to start introducing some of the new items recently purchased/received for Christmas. The first one is a seemingly simple piece of plastic that has become a HUGE time saver: the tee ruler from Heat Transfer Source. This thing has become a must-have for me when making shirts to help properly line up designs as well as cut down on time.
Prior to this tool, I utilized other ways to center designs as best I could, including measuring out from each side of the design to make sure the same amount is on each side, folding the shirt to create a center crease, folding the carrier sheet of the htv to create a center mark, etc. While those methods did work, none gave consistent results and all took up a significant amount of time, especially when working on more than one shirt.
With this tool, it’s become pretty easy to line up designs at the center and at the same time ensure the design is a good distance down from the collar. I do still create a center crease in the carrier sheet of the htv (when there is one) at the top and bottom, but then use an architect ruler on top of the tee ruler to create a perfect perpendicular line (as seen below).
What’s the Issue This Time?
Yeah…of course! Well as loathe as I am to admit, there was of course something to be fixed in this project. Grrrrrrrrr! If you look closely at the picture above, you’ll notice a small sliver of remnant htv to the left. I’ve zoomed in and circled it below.
Unfortunately for me, I didn’t notice until AFTER it had been pressed. It took some work, but it is possible to remove a piece of htv after it has been pressed. Had this htv been thicker/stiffer in any way, such as some holographic and opal htvs, removal would have been much easier.
Since this was matte htv, which is very soft and pliable, it took some extra elbow grease to remove. I am sure there are better ways of removing this. If you know of one, please let me know in the comments. I’d be curious to try out different methods to see which works better for various htvs. What we did (and I say we, but really, it was my mom at FoyFamCreations) was heat up the section and then pry at it carefully with the sharp pointy tweezers from the three piece weeding set (link above in ‘Products Used’). The process took about 10 minutes in total, though in the process video on YouTube it only takes about 10 seconds.
