Making HTV Shirts with the Grands - Part II

Making HTV-vinyl shirts with the girls wasn't nearly as straightforward as it was with B.  Naturally, the girls wanted shirts, but they had chosen to make rompers instead of shorts, so they had nothing to pair it with.   

A and I spent quite a long time perusing the Silhouette Design Store before she decided she wanted a Disney-esque design (she is currently writing a book about Disney!). She chose this castle design.  We didn't have an appropriate-color shirt her size, so it involved a trip to Joann's.  I wish I had thought to buy glitter HTV, but I think I was a little afraid of it (and with good reason, it turns out - HINT:  Be sure to test cut first and change the settings as necessary.  The settings in the machine didn't adequately cut the vinyl, and I had to play with them some to get it to play nicely.)

When we got home, I worked to size it for a shirt her size - as you can see in the photo above it was sized for a full 12x12 cut - way too big for a shirt for a 10-year old.

I tested the design first on a scrap of vinyl, and E requested that I make it into a shirt for her Willa (Wellie Wishers American Girl) doll.  That actually made making E's shirt much easier later.

And naturally, I had to make Mary Ellen (A's American Girl Doll) a matching shirt as well.

Cutting the vinyl wasn't really a problem for the castle, but I forgot to reverse the image for the word MAGIC so naturally I had to do that twice.  Since I didn't have glitter vinyl, we used the same layering technique we used for B's paw prints for a more pronounced look.  As you can see, I'm no expert in sizing complex designs. 

Photo credit:  Cherri Woodruff

Luckily, A was happy with it just the way it was.

Going with the Disney theme, E had chosen Cinderella's Coach as her image.  This looks so cool, doesn't it?

But here's the image you see on the Silhouette.  Each of these is a different color vinyl, which is fine, but resizing all of these disparate parts and getting them to match up is beyond my skills.  I really need expert instruction if I'm ever going to manage this!  (I really wish I could get some in-person instruction on my Silhouette.  Melissa at Silhouette School provides great tutorials - I couldn't have gotten this far without her! -  but to do a project like this, I would need someone holding my hand in person.)  I tried it nevertheless and wasted almost a whole roll of vinyl in the process.

Since the design she chose was impossible (at least for me) I decided to make E's shirt match the doll's shirt.  And because the grands had to go home before I got E's shirt made, I had some time to get some glitter vinyl cut (which was amazingly hard to find due to the manufacturing/transportation issues because of Covid apparently).   

By the time I realized that the pumpkin coach was not going to happen, understood  that a test-cut was needed for glitter vinyl even though I used the suggested settings, and wasted almost a whole roll of glitter vinyl on a pumpkin coach that was too big anyway, I was so frazzled from all the failed attempts that again I forgot to reverse the word "magic" before I cut, so yet more glitter vinyl was wasted.  Hopefully this is a lesson I will remember next time.

In the end, the girls were thrilled with their shirts - and so were the dollies, I hope. 

Making HTV Shirts with the Grands - Part 1

As I mentioned in this post, B made himself a pair of shorts when he visited this summer.  Naturally, we needed to make a shirt to go with it.  I had a red shirt his size in my stash (and now I know that red is his favorite color!) and we headed to the Silhouette Design Store to find the perfect design to go on his shirt.  Of course we decided on paw prints to match the shorts.

I don't use my Silhouette Cameo very much - in fact, it was a Christmas gift from husband in 2012 and I'll bet I haven't used it a dozen times - so I tend to forget exactly what to do to make this process go smoothly.  Luckily, A helped me make our shirts last year, so she remembered a lot more than I did.  B really wanted a red paw print on the front of his shirt - did I mention red is his favorite color? - and I said I didn't think it would show up.  He said, "Grandma, couldn't we put black behind it so it would show up?"  I hadn't tried layering vinyl in this way before, but it worked marvelously.  He obviously has some of his mother's and sister's design savvy. 

Last year during the Amazon Prime Day sale, I had bought a Cricut Easy Press at a steal of a deal.  I had looked at the larger presses, but I have no room for one, and I honestly don't use it that often...  In fact, I hadn't taken it out of the box until the day we made this shirt.  But WOW!  Does it make a difference!  Last year, I tried to press the designs with my steam iron and it was a nightmare.  The press makes it so much easier.  If you can afford one, I highly recommend getting a press.  (As I linked to Amazon just now, I noticed that there are several knock-offs of the Cricut press, and I have no idea if they are as good as the original, but the Cricut is easy to use and I got great results.  Just be sure to keep the time/temperature card handy.)

A and B both helped me weed the paw prints, and B thought it was great fun to use the Easy Press, so this turned out to be a super-fun evening activity with the kids.