Anniversary Shirts for Me and My Awesome Husband

 

We celebrated our anniversary in style this year with custom t-shirts that said, "We Still Do". 

Since this was my first project with Cricut Infusible Ink, I decided to use the Cricut shirts to ensure the best results. The white t-shirts are women's and men's Cricut Infusible Ink t-shirts from JoAnn Fabrics. The men's style fit my husband perfectly. The women's style has a deep v-neck and slight shaping to the side seams.  I found that the women's styles run small - the Women's XL is closer to Men's Medium even though traditionally, it should be comparable to the Men's Large - so next time I'll get the next size up or purchase the men's shirt for me. Both styles are reasonably opaque compared to other white t-shirts that are often mostly see-through. 

I used Cricut Infusible Ink for both shirts. For my husband's shirt, I used the blue Cricut Infusible Ink sheet from the "Brushed Sunset" package. For mine, I used the gems encrusted Blue to yellow Cricut Infusible Ink sheet from the "Bright Bow Gems" package. The colors definitely turned out brighter and nicer looking than what the sheet looked like before transferring. 

My first cut - this one actually was a failure because it wasn't cut deep enough to cut through the material. Too bad I wasted a sheet with colors I really liked. I shouldn't have pulled it out of the machine before trying to weed it, but because I did remove it, I couldn't put it back in and trust it to cut exactly on the same lines. One sheet wasted... but the remains of that sheet were useful in determining the correct settings for cutting so that I wouldn't waste more Infusible Ink.

Weeding the "gems" piece. You can see that the material that I am weeding out is very paper-like. The backing is clear. The gems are also more obvious on a full sheet rather than narrow lettering.

Another shot of the weeding process - you can see the design taking shape. The white I'm holding up is actually the back of the Infusible Ink that's being weeded out. 

This Infusible Ink is meant to be cut mirror image, just like HTV, so mirror the design before cutting! Here's the fully weeded transfer ready to be pressed.

Because Infusible Ink can soak through the shirt, place a few sheets of butcher paper inside the shirt before applying heat using the Cricut Easy Press 2. The temperature and time settings are listed on Cricut's website.  

The directions also stated that I was supposed to use a lint roller to remove lint from the shirt before applying the Infusible Ink. I forgot that step, however, I was lucky enough to have a pair of shirts that were lint-free, so it worked out fine.

The finished shirt. Design placement on shirts can vary. On the crew neck, I centered the design about 3" below the neckline. I measured using my hand. Four fingers width is a good distance for L or XL men's shirt; 3 fingers for S or M; 2 fingers for kids. I measure with my hand because it's a measuring device that I can't misplace. 

This was an attempt to illustrate the color difference between the weeded out "before pressing" ink color and the final ink color. The difference is more dramatic in reality.  

Another color color comparison, this time with the gems Infusible Ink. The color difference is clearer in this photo. 

Also note that the rule for placing the design (4 fingers) only applied to the crew neck. The v-neck is quite low, so placing the design 3" below the bottom of the neck would have pushed the design too far down. Instead, you can see that the design is placed about 1/2" below the point of the neckband. I just eyeballed the placement.   

Photo of my completed shirt. 

The two lovebirds modeling our anniversary shirts.

CHEERS!

HAPPY CRAFTING

Update: Love Notions "Dockside" shirt on Hubby!

 

One of the biggest challenges is getting my husband to pose for a photograph. Finally cornered him before he could escape so I could show how nice the shirt looks on him. This is the Love Notions "Dockside" polo shirt. It's a really easy pattern to make and the cut works well for my square shouldered husband.

Read my blog post about constructing the shirt here. 

Love Notions' "Dockside" shirt

 

Project for this weekend was finishing up making my first polo shirt for my husband. It has received the hubby stamp of approval! His comment was, "can you make a dozen more of these? It's more comfy than the ones we buy in the stores". 

The pattern I used was Love Notions' "Dockside Henley and Polo" pattern. It comes with my husband's stamp of approval. He's extremely fussy about what he will and will not wear, so if he approves, then it's a good pattern. The instructions were easy to follow and the shirt came together easily. The only issue I had was getting the binding to lay flat. I wound up hand stitching in place first, then stitching over it with the machine. I think the issues were mostly due to the very stretchy, thick, and spongy knit fabric I selected. 

He loves having pockets on his polo shirts - yes, he puts things in the pockets and often forgets those items when he throws the shirts in the wash so I have to be careful to check the pockets every time I do a wash load. He also wanted to have his company logo on the pocket instead of above it. That meant that I had to embroider the shirt before sewing it together. This turned out to be a good thing because this particular knit is extra squishy and stretchy, so I had to test several stabilizers before getting a good embroidery. I had to use Sulky sticky to control the stretch and added to it my usual cutaway stabilizer for extra strength and stabilization. 

The other advantage of embroidering the pocket before attaching it was that I was able to center the embroidery better because I embroidered on a scrap of fabric larger than the pocket then traced out the pocket shape after embroidering. This also helped hide any slightly crooked hooping if there was any. 

The back also embroidered much easier on a "blank" back piece rather than a full shirt. Much easier hooping exercise since I didn't have to worry about catching the sleeves or other parts of the shirt in the embroidery. 

I used my lovely 1975 Bernina 830 record to perform the sewing. I don't know what it is about Vintage machines, but I found I really like the way this machine sews knits. It does a much better job than my insanely expensive modern Bernina 830 Embroidery / Sewing computer. I really don't mind having to manually thread the needed and quite frankly, the only stitches I usually use are straight stitch and zig zag, so I don't need 1500+ other stitches. 

Ironing the neck binding on my clapper to get a good press. 

Stitching the collar to the neckline. The camera makes my bright sewing room look like a dark cave. I'm not sure why but that's what it does. 

Anyway, the shirt came out nice enough that my husband approves, so that's what's most important. I couldn't convince him to model it, but I'll try to get a photo of him when he wears the shirt.

HAPPY SEWING!!

Heat Press!

 

I finally purchased a heat press for myself. 

Yes, I considered the very nice large 8 in 1 heat presses, as well as the 5 in 1 heat presses, but in the end wound up picking up the 9" x 9" Cricut Easy Press 2.

Why? 

Although there are many heat presses available at prices between $100 and $250 which could have been better choices, I had a few requirements that only the Cricut Easy Press 2 could meet.

Size

First, the heat press had to be compact. My sewing/craft room is already jampacked with sewing machines, notions, fabric, and assorted other stuff, leaving very little space for a heat press. 

A 15" x 15" heat press, especially if it comes with multiple attachments, requires a lot of space. It has to be far enough away from other things so that nothing accidentally touches it when it's hot.

The Cricut Easy Press 2 is 9" x 9" x 3" and easily slips onto a shelf on the cart underneath my ironing board when not in use. 

Weight

This was probably the biggest concern. Most of the heat press machines I saw tipped the scales in the 40-50 pound range. A large heat press like that can only be moved safely once it has cooled off, so the heat press would require its own table or cart which it would live upon permanently. I have several antique sewing machines and know how difficult they are to move around when I need to relocate them. I don't have enough space for another cart or table, and the lower shelves of the cart for my ironing board wouldn't be able to safely stow the heat press - not to mention the wrestling match required to move the heat press into place each time I need it nor the issue of not being able to use my ironing board until well after the heat press cools off and is stowed elsewhere. 

The 9" x 9" Cricut Easy Press 2 weighs in a 5 lbs. It is designed so you can pick it up and move it elsewhere easily even when it's still hot. This means I can press a project on the ironing board, then put the Easy Press on another surface to cool off so I can use the ironing board for other sewing or crafting activities. 

Instructions

Of the many heat presses I viewed on Amazon, I noticed that the reviews for most indicated that the instructions were either not clear or missing completely. Some had videos on either the amazon site or had links to the instructional videos, but not all of them. This would mean I would have to spend time fiddling with the machine to figure out how to operate it, and likely make many errors along the way. 

I really liked the way the Cricut Easy Press 2 presented itself. It came with a nice booklet with instructions and photos of each step for using it. The Cricut website also has handy charts to use to determine the heat and time combinations for all kinds of HTV (bookmarked that immediately). 

The Cricut Easy Press 2 came with all the required materials to complete my first project using it. In the box was the carrying bag for the Cricut Easy Press 2 and a Cricut Logo cut out in green glitter HTV. The instruction pamphlet walked through the steps for turning the Easy Press on, seeing when it was heated, pressing the bag to prep it for HTV application, and finally applying the HTV. 

I really liked having that project. It meant that within minutes of opening the box, I completed a practical project with the Easy Press 2. 

I'm sure I'll have many more projects using the Cricut Easy Press. It definitely adheres the HTV better than my iron and with far less fuss. 

HAPPY CRAFTING!