School projects can be fun, they can also be very overwhelming. The kids are doing a living history museum for school. Max is Steve Prefontaine. He was an incredible long distance runner. He made quite an impact for future Olympic athletes during his short life. A family friend’s kiddo is Herb Brooks. Herb was the coach of the 1980 Miracle on Ice men’s USA Olympic hockey team. During the 1980 Olympics the USA faced off against Russia, 4-time defending gold medalists. The Miracle on Ice is known as one of the top moments in 20th century sports history, it was a huge upset for the young, amateur USA team to beat Russia whose team consisted of professional players.
The kids had to research their people, find facts and information about the impact the person made on history. Write a one-minute speech and dress like their chosen person. That’s where my crafting comes in…DIY custom shirts using heat transfer vinyl. Creating the Steve Prefontaine outfit was pretty simple. I used my Criciut to cut-out an Oregon logo to put on the front of a white tank-top. Steve ran for Oregon State. A pair of shorts and Nike running shoes complete the outfit.
Herb Brooks wore classic late 70’s plaid suites while he was on the bench coaching. When he was on the ice during practice, he often wore a warm-up suite. For this school assignment, the outfit would be the classic jogging suite, styled for team USA. I again used my Cricuit to cut out USA letters in red vinyl with an offset in white vinyl. An offset is a great way to make a bubble or outline around letters.
I know a lot of people have made mistakes and had learning moments from Cricut crafts. I’m no exception. I’ve definitely learned a few things through trial and error. Usually, I’m pretty good about planning my projects out. One thing I recently learned that’s been a HUGE help to me is to cut down your vinyl. Make sure the vinyl piece is a little bigger than whatever you’re cutting out for your project. This makes it much easier for the mat to hold the material in place for cutting. This is especially true if your material doesn’t stick to the mat very well. I’m talking about you, leather. Anyway, it also helps for weeding purposes. Weeding is when you remove the excess material around your cuts. This is all great, until you accidentally measure and cut your material too short. (forehead slap). You can see the error of my ways with the sad faces, I trimmed my vinyl piece too short, so when my Cricut cut the vinyl, I didn’t get the very bottom of the USA letters.
So, clearly I had to re-cut the white USA. Oh well, these things happen. I made the USA in two different sizes, one for the front and one for the back. I cut apart the vinyl letters. I slanted them down the front of the jacket. This mimicked the style from the 1980’s USA Olympic wear. For the back, the USA went straight across, this should be easy, right? The white vinyl went down splendidly. However, when I layered the red on top, things didn’t align so well. If I matched the A to be centered, it left a nice uniform white border around the red A. But then the U was off. I ended up cutting the red USA letters apart and laying them individually on top of the white letters. This allowed me to get a consistent white border around each letter. Sometimes you have to improvise and take a different route to get the results you want.
I also strongly recommend reading the directions for your materials. In this case, I was placing Everyday Heat Transfer Vinyl onto a 100% Polyester shirt. I used my heat press for about 15 seconds to place the white down. This is only 1/2 the usual amount of time. I waited for the vinyl to be cool to the touch to peal off the plastic backing. Then, I placed the red where I wanted it, using the heat press for a full 30 seconds. Again, I waited for things to cool down before peeling off the plastic. I have struggled many times to remove the plastic when things were hot. The vinyl did not stick to the shirt. I’ve also placed the bottom layer of vinyl using the full heating time. When I layered another color with the full heating time, the bottom layer got wrinkly. Layering heat transfer vinyl isn’t an exact science, hopefully my experiences will help your project be successful!
I am really happy with how both shirts turned out. These kiddos are going to look great at the living history museum!
Leave a Reply