Silhouette Fabric | I Tri and Craft

March 14, 2016
by Dawn Marie 5 Comments

Custom Daredevil Shirt ~ Silhouette Blog Hop & a Giveaway!!

When Sid turned two we had an Evel Knievel themed birthday party for him. This seemed perfect for our little daredevil. Admittedly when discussing this theme with Ian he was a little concerned. It took me a while to figure out why, and then I explained to him that Evel is a person’s name and that he was not evil, and when I say ‘daredevil’ I also don’t mean someone who is bad. I just love how kid brains process things.

Originally I wanted to make Sid an Evel Knievel suit. And when I say ‘I wanted to make’, I really mean I wanted my mom to make him one (see picture).

But it was so hot and we had lots of water activities at his party that he wouldn’t really be wearing it…..so I scratched that idea.

I also thought of just making him a shirt that looks like the top of Evel’s suite. Think tuxedo shirt….

But I still wasn’t sold on that idea. Then I found an image somewhere on Google that I thought would be great for his shirt and a whole new idea was formed.

I wanted to customize Sid’s shirt so I took the image traced and altered it. (As I do with everything I make.)

It is convenient that Sid’s name only has three letters and fit under the motorcycle in place of the engine. I used two colors of flocked HTV (HTV=Heat Transfer Vinyl), it’s the kinda fuzzy stuff. I personally think it holds up better than regular HTV by the way.

It was a little difficult to get a picture of him in his shirt on his birthday (left) but he still wears this shirt all the time (he’s three and a half now).

I went ahead and used the same image for his party favors. I simply replaced Sid with Ride, as I felt people wouldn’t want to take home bags that say “Sid” on them. For the bags I used the printable HTV for light colors (there is a difference between the one for light fabric and the one for dark fabric, I explain it in this post) and had my Cameo cut around the outside of the image, and the larger pieces inside.

Inside the bag is a matching tattoo and sticker also made with my Silhouette Cameo.

Turns out that this Silhouette Challenge theme was all about Fabrics! So I just knew this project would fit in perfectly. Now since using HTV is only one option with working with your Silhouette and fabrics these wonderful ladies have come up with some other amazing ideas for you. My Silhouette Challenge buddies and I are all sharing projects on our blogs today, so peruse the projects below for a wealth of Silhouette inspiration!

1. Cutesy Crafts // 2. Mama Sonshine // 3. Morena’s Corner // 4. Simply Kelly Designs // 5. Coral + Mint Design Co. // 6. A Time For Seasons // 7. Architecture of a Mom // 8. Where The Smiles Have Been // 9. Haberdashery Fun // 10. The Thinking Closet // 11. The Crafting Nook // 12. Get Silvered // 13. Tori Grant Designs // 14. From Wine to Whine // 15. Create & Babble // 16. Curly Crafty Mom // 17. unOriginal Mom // 18. The Small Stuff Counts // 19. The Experimental Home // 20. Creative Ramblings // 21. Adventures in All Things Food // 22. Minted Strawberry

But wait there’s more…

Because really if you are going to be working with HTV you really want a heat press and right now you have a chance to win one!

Heat Press Giveaway

click on picture to enter contest

Pro World Inc is giving one lucky reader a Heat Press Valued at $300!

Pretty sweet, huh? To enter: just complete the entries in the Rafflecopter link below. You have 26 potential entries, which means a lot of winning power. So, hurry up and enter!

{This giveaway runs from today through Monday, March 21st at 11:59p eastern and is open to anyone 18 years of age or older with a lower 48 U.S. mailing address. You can read the rest of the terms and conditions in the widget below, click through the link below.}

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→→ a Rafflecopter giveaway ←←

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This year my running club and I will be participating in the Hood to Coast Relay Race as a fundraising team. We will be raising money for Providence Cancer Center to help #FINISHCANCER. Click on the picture below (or here) to donate today.

July 2, 2014
by Dawn Marie 5 Comments

Star and Shark USA Flag Shirt

I had thought I was very cleaver making my four-year old a Capt. America shirt for him to wear on July 4th.

Till I showed him and he said “I don’t yike Capt. America now”

hmmm….

OK back to the drawing board.

This time around I decided to take a sailors approach to the flag. Because I saw Lauren’s post (The Thinking Closet) about her Nautical Star Banner. I just loved the nautical star and thought it would look great on a shirt. But I didn’t want plain old boring stripes….

hmm….what to do….

shark_mask_grn

Then my son picks these out at the store. “I’m a SHARK! dana dana dana”

So my brain clicked and this shirt was born. Just in the nick of time.

My original plan was to do the stencil with freezer paper, because it makes a tighter seal and crisper lines.. But the cuts are too intricate for my dull blade. So I used vinyl, and as you can see some of the detail, like the gills was lost, and the edges are a little blurred.

The tricky part to this shirt is all the small pieces, I didn’t want to lay every little piece of freezer paper down one at a time. I thought I would share how I connected all the parts to make one complete stencil. Lauren also talks about how to do this in her afore-mentioned post.

First find the FREE images you want to use and trace them. (Please be mindful of copyright laws, and other people’s art work)

Draw lots of little rectangles using the rectangle tool. Place them on top, over the two parts you want connected. Select everything, go to the modify window and click on subtract. Then select everything again and click on make, under compound path.

If you go to the color fill tool box and fill your shape with a color, you can easily see you now have a star that has missing parts. The parts that are colored is what will be painted on the shirt.

After tracing the shark, we do the same thing. Make rectangles, go to modify and click subtract.

Then, under compound path, click make (after selecting all parts of the shark). You will see that when I traced the shark, I made sure that the gills and eye were part of the white portion. This eliminates a bunch of little eyes having to be added after the stencil is laid down.

Draw a large rectangle, the size that you want your flag. Use the replicate and alignment tool boxes to fill the rectangle with your stars and stripes.

The row of … and column of…were especially useful in this design. As was the space vertically and space horizontally tools in the alignment tool box.

Now select everything, the outer rectangle, all the sharks and all the stars, go to the modify window and click on make compound path.

Of course this removes all the fill colors you have used, but that’s ok.

If you click on a fill color now, you will see that all the parts that will be your stencil are now colored. These are the parts that the shirt will show through.

You can look closely and see all the parts are connected and will come off in one piece.

Cut, apply to shirt, paint, etc. You know the drill.

Got all that?

Well don’t worry, I decided to just let you download this cut file. For free. Yep. Go ahead and make your own. Tonight. Cause the fourth is coming soon.

Star and Shark USA Flag Stencil file

I used vinyl as my stencil, but you can also use freezer paper (just make sure your blade is sharp) or stencil material would work great.

My older son wouldn’t wear it…

so I made the baby try it on

Thanks for visiting
Shine On

I linked up here:

June 9, 2014
by Dawn Marie 10 Comments

Freezer Paper July 4th Shirts

Freezer paper is every crafters’ best friend and I can now see why.

I have made shirts for the boys before using Heat Transfer Vinyl and Printable Heat Transfer Material, but never using fabric paint.

For this month’s Silhouette Challenge the theme was patriotic. Seriously you could go anywhere with that theme, but I decided the boys needed custom shirts to wear on the 4th of July.

I wanted to make a stencil out of freezer paper that I cut with my Silhouette Cameo. I didn’t want the basic plain old flag, but I wanted something kinda flag related.

So I cam up with this shirt for Sid. It says “Stars and Stripes” and has coordinating graphics with the words. And it was done in Red, White, & Blue. Tots Adorbs huh?

Since I didn’t actually want them to match I decided to make Ian a Capt. America shirt. Because who is more patriotic than Capt. America?

The process

Create and cut your design, you don’t have to use a cutting machine to make a shirt out of freezer paper but it sure is helpful.

In the cutting machine the freezer paper can be cut with shiny side up or shiny side down. However, the shiny side is the side you will iron to your fabric, so if you cut shiny side up, you will need to mirror (flip horizontally) your design. I used a blade of 2, speed of 3 and thickness of 10. But there has been a variety of recommended settings on-line, so make sure to do a test cut first.

Iron on your stencil. Put the shiny side down on your fabric and use a dry iron on the setting for your fabric. Use lots of pressure, and pay extra special attention to the edges. You don’t want paint to bleed under the stencil. Freezer paper and transfer tape don’t mix, so you will have to put all those little letter innards back by hand. I made font decisions with this in consideration.

Here is a little confession. I don’t paint much, so I didn’t have any paint sponges or foam brushes or anything at home. You know what I did have though? Make-up foam applicator, which worked just fine.

Make sure you place a piece of cardboard or a few pieces of cardstock between the layers of your shirt. The paint can bleed through, and you don’t want it showing up on the back of your shirt.

Make sure you dab and lift, do not brush. Brushing can lead to paint bleeding under your stencil. The idea is have many thin layers of paint instead of one thick one. I decided I wanted the ‘and’ to be a mix of red and blue, because I didn’t want too much of one color.

Let your paint dry and peel up your stencil. You may have to hold down the shirt to avoid stretching the newly painted fabric.

Most fabric paint requires you to heat set it, running the iron over the design so the paint doesn’t wash off. The fabric paint I bought did not have that on the instructions, but I did it anyway. I ran the iron over the front of the shirt, with a pillowcase in between, after is had dried for a couple of days. I turned it inside out and washed it after that.

If you notice above the word “stars” you can see a little smear of red pain because the frame of my stencil was too small. I didn’t run the iron over that part, and it was mostly gone after washing it. So I am glad I did heat set the rest of the shirt.

The Captain America shirt seemed like it was going to be easy, but I forgot about the fact that there is a red circle next to a blue circle with no white between.

So I had to paint it on two different days.

The stencils were different circles, so the inner white circle is actually two. After all the above was dry, I removed the circle next to the blue, but left the one where it should be white. I then added another circle to cover the blue center. This one didn’t stick as well because I was afraid to mess up the paint, so I didn’t press to hard or long.

This lead to some bleeding of the red paint in to the blue circle.

But it only looks bad close up.

My older son then informed me he no longer likes Capt. America, so he wouldn’t wear the shirt for me.

He did tell me he was a Mystic Forest Ranger Zombie Hunter though.

At least Sid was cooperative.

Happy Crafting

Want to Check Out More Silhouette Projects?

My Silhouette Challenge buddies and I are all sharing projects on our blogs today, so pursue the projects below for a wealth of Silhouette inspiration!

1. Our Rosey Life // 2. My Mom Made That // 3. The Kim Six Fix // 4. Create & Babble // 5. The Frill of Life // 6. My Paper Craze // 7. Kate’s Paper Creations // 8. Simply Kelly Designs // 9. Dragonfly & Lily Pads // 10. Mama Sonshine // 11. Lil Mrs. Tori // 12. Tried & True // 13. It Happens in a Blink // 14. McCall Manor // 15. The Thinking Closet // 16. unOriginal Mom // 17. Sowdering About // 18. Weekend Craft // 19. The Outlandish Momma // 20. Adventures in All Things Food // 21. Practically Functional // 22. Silhouette School // 23. Please Excuse My Craftermath… // 24. Ginger Snap Craft // 25. Pineapples And Pinecones // 26. Black and White Obsession // 27. TitiCrafty // 28. Architecture of a Mom //

May 22, 2014
by Dawn Marie 4 Comments

Tips for Printable Heat Transfer Material

I may have mentioned once or twice how much I love the print and cut feature on my Silhouette Cameo.

Well, I am going to bring it up again. Only this time I will be using a Heat Transfer Material to make a gift.

There are other brands out there that sell this kind of material, but I use Avery, because I can buy it just about anywhere.

Here is the concept, you print something out on your computer, cut it out and then iron it on to something made of fabric. And viola! Your very own custom shirt, coat, bag, pillow, blanket, etc.

I wanted to make a six-year-old girl a bag with her favorite Monster High Character. I could have made one by layering colored heat transfer vinyl (HTV) but the characters from Monster High have sooo many coloring shades, that it would either too much work (& too munch HTV) or it wouldn’t give me the same look I was going for.

I have used this material in the past, so I am very familiar with it, but as with all projects, I ran into some trouble. I figured it would be beneficial to others if I shared my snafu, so you will not make the same mistake.

Here are a few tips for using the printable heat transfer material:

Know your printer. Printer inks are different and behave differently. If you have an ink jet printer, get the material designed for ink jet printers. If it is a laser printer, there is a different material for that, as well as the other inks, like UV. If you choose the wrong type your ink will not set and will either run or fade.
- Print a test page on regular paper to see how your image will fit, and line up. You don’t want to waste any of the transfer material.
There are two different kinds of transfer material. One for light-colored fabrics and one for dark.
- The one for light-colored fabrics is an actual ink transfer material. It will transfer the ink on to your shirt, so the places in your design that are white, will be transparent, meaning the shirt will show through. The material that it is printed on will adhere to the fabric, so there is a protective layer between the ink and the outside world. You must also remember to flip your design on the horizontal plane when using this material.
- The one for dark-colored fabrics is like a sticker. It is a white material and so the white areas in your design will remain white. Plus, there is no need to flip the design. It is the one I like to use the best.
- Weed carefully, this material can tear easily. But it is not sticky, so you can do it in sections.
- Don’t use the shade of fabric alone to make the decision on which one to use. Think about what you want your project to look like in the end. I use the material for dark fabrics all the time, even on light-colored fabric like this tote bag.
Your iron must be hot and dry. If you use this to iron out the wrinkles in your clothes, dump out the water. Set your iron to the hottest setting. It is also not recommended you not use an ironing board. This could be because you don’t want an uneven surface, but it is also because of the reflective heat material under the cover. Heat on the bottom of the material may interfere with it bonding to the fabric. I place a folded, ironed sheet on my kitchen counter.
Cool removal or not? Some heat transfer material requires you to wait until the design has cooled before removing the transfer plastic. If it does and you rush it, you can peel off your design with the transfer plastic, so be patient.
Don’t be discouraged when it takes longer to adhere than the instructions say. I have held the iron in place for minutes, when the instructions say 45-60 seconds.
Apply constant high pressure. You are not ironing out the wrinkles, so don’t move your iron around. You can mess up your design, as I did.
- But not all is lost if you do. Here is something you might not know: the heat that put it on, can take it off.
  - Apply heat back to the design and quickly use something to scrap away the design before it cools. I first used my weeding tool to pull the design, but that was taking too long. I then thought of my scrapping tool (a used Sil gift card), when the design was still hot I just scrapped it off. You have to keep applying heat to small areas and scrapping, and repeating. The scrapping doesn’t take too long, and within 10 minutes, it was gone. There is a slight bit of ‘glue’ left, it’s not really glue, but there is a residue, it’s kind of like a shiny outline of your design.
- That’s OK, because you are going to reprint your design and reapply. This time, not moving the iron around.