How to Apply Heat Transfer Vinyl to a Hat

The warm weather is finally looking to be here to stay! My family is starting to hike more now that we live in Colorado and being at 5000 feet above sea level definitely means that the sun is a factor here.

Once I saw the fun raising boys SVG file in the Amazing Craft Bundle I knew I had to make myself a hat to help keep the sun out of my face.

I picked up a hat at the dollar store so it's extremely lightweight.

First, let's make the design ready to cut with your electronic cutting machine. Open the file in the software and scale it to size.

You always need to mirror designs when working with heat transfer vinyl since you cut on the back (shiny side down).

Send the file to be cut, you'll notice that you aren't seeing the red cut lines. Click on the image and select "cut" for tool 1. This turns on the cut lines already in the file.

Make sure to adjust the cut settings for the material and send it to be cut.

After you cut the design, weed out the extra material using your hook tool or tweezers. Also, start preheating your iron to the cotton setting with no steam.

One really useful item to use is heat tape. It will help hold the vinyl in place on the hat for you. Because of the curve of the hat, I found cutting the carrier sheet in a few places helped it curve.

You'll need something to place inside the hat to give you a semi-firm base to press the iron against. I rolled up a 1" foam sheet and used a hair tie to hold it together.

Put the foam inside the hat and use the tip of the iron to start pressing the heat transfer onto the hat. You'll see the carrier sheet start to pull away once it's attached.

Check to make sure all of the letters are attached and peel away the carrier sheet. Congratulations, you just made a hat!!!No hat press required!

I'm ready to head out into the wild with my new hat for our next hike.

Perhaps I'll make some other hikers laugh if they notice what it says. It's so true by the way, boys are little wild animals sometimes! Best to keep them outside to run off that crazy energy.