How to Make a Custom Sweatshirt With Heat Transfer Vinyl

I grabbed an old sweatshirt from my closet, some heat transfer vinyl I had lying around, and decided to make something custom. Here's how it went.

• A plain sweatshirt (cotton or cotton-blend works best)
• Heat transfer vinyl (HTV) in your color of choice
• Cutting machine (Cricut or Silhouette)
• Weeding tools
• Iron or heat press
• Pressing cloth or parchment paper

1. Design your graphic

Open your cutting software and create your design. I went with a retro-inspired text design — something simple that wouldn't take forever to weed. Keep in mind that script fonts with thin lines can be a pain to weed, so if you're new to this, stick with bold, blocky letters.

2. Cut the vinyl

Load your HTV into the cutting machine with the shiny carrier sheet facing down. Set your machine to the "iron-on" or "HTV" setting. Let it cut. Mine took about three minutes for a short text design.

3. Weed the design

This is the part where you peel away all the excess vinyl from around your design. Use a weeding hook for the small pieces. I messed up the letter "a" on my first try — had to cut a new one. Take your time here.

4. Position it on the sweatshirt

Lay your sweatshirt flat. Place the weeded design where you want it — I went with center chest. Put a scrap piece of cardboard inside the sweatshirt so the vinyl doesn't bleed through to the back.

5. Press it

Set your iron to cotton setting with no steam. Press down firmly for about 15 seconds on each section of the design. Use a pressing cloth between the iron and the vinyl so you don't melt anything. Let it cool for a minute, then peel the carrier sheet off slowly.

6. Done

That's it. You now have a custom sweatshirt that nobody else has. Cost me about $8 in materials and took maybe 20 minutes total.

I should have pre-washed the sweatshirt first. The vinyl stuck fine, but if the sweatshirt shrinks later, the design could warp. Also, I pressed a little too long on one spot and got a shiny mark on the fabric — nothing visible from a few feet away, but I notice it.