I love the idea of adding fun touches to your handmade items to inject them with your own personality. You can do this with a sew in label or by adding designs with iron on vinyls.
I teamed up with Happy Fabric this week to create an Instagram Live tutorial showing just how easy it is to use their iron on vinyls. They have recently released a selection of animal print vinyls which are incredible!
I made a Tilly and the Buttons Billie sweatshirt from our Black Fleece Backed Sweatshirting and wanted to personalise it using some of the HappyFlex Animal.
I love the phrase ‘Leopard print is a neutral’, so I wanted to have the word ‘neutral’ in leopard print on the front of my jumper. I used the Design Space tool for my Cricut machine and selected a font that I liked. I tried my jumper on and measured to see how big I wanted the lettering and used that to guide my design.
The vinyl is easy to cut out – you need to remember to mirror the design and then cut it with the shiny side facing down. You can, of course, draw and cut it out by hand too, but my drawing and cutting skills are not that great and I know I can get a better result with my cricut!
You need to give your garment a quick pre-press and then carefully position the vinyl transfer and cover with greaseproof paper. Refer to the Happy Fabric guide to determine what temperature you will need and how long you need to press for. Make sure you are using a dry iron, without steam.
Once the vinyl has cooled, you then get to peel off the carrier sheet – the most satisfying bit! And voila, a finished project!
I also used some of the HappyFlock in the Magenta colour to personalise a tote bag that I made for my knitting projects. I made the bag from some calico, and lined it with our Pink Galaxy Cotton. I found a design file on Etsy that I liked, and cut it out on my Cricut machine.
I’ve used Happy Fabric iron on vinyls several times over the years to personalise items for me and presents for other people. Here are some examples:
Ideal fabrics to use for iron on vinyls are cotton jerseys, plain cottons, plain linens or calico.