Cricut Maker T Shirt For Beginners

Sunday, September 18th 2022. | Sample Templates

Cricut Maker T Shirt For Beginners – Making Cricut shirts is a great way to use an electronic cutting machine. Learn how to make a cricket t-shirt from start to finish!

My favorite craft tool is hands down my Cricut. If you’ve been following me for a while, you know how much I love my cutters.

Cricut Maker T Shirt For Beginners

Cricut Maker T Shirt For Beginners

I really like being able to customize what I want. Making t-shirts with my Cricut is one of the reasons I bought a Cricut in the first place, and oh, the shirts I’ve made have gotten better and better over the past eight years!

Print Then Cut Cricut Transfer T Shirts

So for this tutorial I want to share everything from making the Cricut shirt to the end. We’ll show you how to design a custom shirt in Crit Design Space, how to cut, iron-on vinyl, and then apply the design to the t-shirt.

With this project in mind for you Cricut beginners, we’re going to take an in-depth look at how to make a shirt with Cricut.

I have a full video tutorial, a list of Cricut shirt ideas, and printable instructions at the bottom of this post. If you like this Cricut shirt tutorial, I’d love it if you could give it a star rating below!

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links to Amazon, ExpressionsVinyl.com and/or Cricut.com. If you make a purchase using my links (purple text) I will give you a small commission for free.

Diy T Shirts For Men

This is a question that gets asked a lot, so I thought we’d start here. The simple answer is anything!

Three Cricut vinyl cutters recently released are Cricut Explore Family, Cricut Joy and Cricut Maker. The Cricut Explore 3, Cricut Explore Air 2, Cricut Joy, Cricut Maker, and Cricut Maker 3 all cut iron-on vinyl or HTV for shirts in the same way and also use the same blades and housing.

To cut all types of vinyl, you will need a fine point blade. This blade is standard on all Cricut machines.

Cricut Maker T Shirt For Beginners

If you want to know more about the differences between Cricut machines, I have a whole post on which Cricut is best for you if you want to check it out.

Making Shirts With Cricut (& April Fool’s Shirt Designs!)

Kraft and Cricut vinyl has confused everyone at some point! There are many types of vinyl and you need them for different projects. The two main types of vinyl are self-adhesive and iron-on vinyl.

To make a t-shirt or sweater, you’ll need iron-on vinyl or heat transfer vinyl (or HTV). A common question is what is the difference between iron-on vinyl and HTV? Simple answer… nothing!

And to make things a little more confusing, different brands call the type of vinyl that adheres to the heat-contact material by different names. Crit vinyl for shirts is called iron-on vinyl. Other companies call it heat transfer vinyl, or HTV for short. So it’s the same thing, just different brand names.

Iron on vinyl, heat transfer vinyl, and HTV are used interchangeably among crafters, so know that it’s the same thing.

How To Make Graphic T Shirts In Cricut Design Space

Caesar Easyweed and Fame Crafts HTV are popular brands of heat transfer vinyl. My personal favorites are Cricut Iron-On Vinyl and Scissor Easyweed. ExpressionsVinyl.com is a great place to buy the Siser brand, and Cricut.com has deals on their iron-on vinyls. Plus, Amazon always has everything!

Further, each brand has different types of iron-on vinyl. Special iron-on vinyl patterned, shiny, holographic, shiny, printable, mesh, flexible, mosaic, etc. I recommend trying at least two different brands and see which one you like working with the most when creating custom t-shirts.

In addition to your Cricut and iron-on vinyl, there are a few other supplies you’ll need when you first start making shirts. If you’re wondering what else is available, don’t forget to check out my Essential Cricut Accessories.

Cricut Maker T Shirt For Beginners

So now that you know what cricut and supplies you need, let’s start designing custom t-shirts in the cricut design space. (If you just want to use my Blessed Mama SVG file, I can download it for free below!)

The Usual Suspects Cricut T Shirt

The hardest part of making a shirt is deciding which pattern you want to use. But the great thing is that you can make as many shirts as you want!

If you don’t want to use your own design or design something yourself, there are many sites with free SVG files, or you can purchase one from Cricut Access or Etsy. There’s a whole selection of SVG files to choose from, including free blessing files, dog mom svg, boy mom svg, and more!

But if you want to make a truly unique shirt, learning how to use and design CDS is a must. Once you get used to it, it’s a very simple piece of software. I have a five-part series on detailed tutorials for the Cricut design space if you need more help learning.

For this shirt demo, let’s do something simple like words and get used to it for free. Again, it’s all in the video tutorial at the bottom of this post, but I’ll also describe all the steps. Above (or to the side) is a short overview video for those who just need a little refresher.

How To Use Heat Transfer Vinyl With A Cricut Machine: A Step By Step Guide

Open Cricut Design Space and click New Project. CDS is now offline, so download it if you haven’t already.

Click the text button on the left. I like to put my words in different text boxes so I can use different fonts and change the size more easily.

After clicking the button, a box will appear. Enter a word. For this custom shirt, I type “BESSED” into the text field. I clicked “Text” again and typed “Mama” in the second field.

Cricut Maker T Shirt For Beginners

Then I click on “Bless” again. I then clicked on the font drop down menu in the upper left corner and selected block text. Since most computers have Arial, I chose Arial Bold.

How To Screen Print Shirts And Decor With Your Cricut

Then I clicked on “Mama” and selected the script font. Just choose the one you like and it is already installed on your computer. I can’t remember what the standard was, so I chose Best Dreams.

To learn more about text, read where I get free fonts and how to upload them to CDS.

If you select a script font, it will not be included in the CDS with the attached letters. The easiest way to connect letters is to click the “Space” down button until most of them are connected.

Once it’s the way you want it, use your cursor to place a square around “Mama” and click the Weld button in the lower right corner. It joins all the letters to form a continuous cut.

Butterfly T Shirt

Click on each word and use the double arrows to zoom in or out. You can always click on the lock to unlock if you want to change them out of proportion.

Move until you get the words you want on your t-shirt. Now use your cursor to place both words in the same field and click the “Attach” button in the lower right corner.

This will tell Cricut to cut them as they are. (If you are using more than one color of vinyl, only add words or pictures that are the same color).

Cricut Maker T Shirt For Beginners

The next step is optional, but I always like how my Cricut t-shirt looks using templates. Click the Templates button in the top left corner and a bunch of different templates will appear. I scrolled down until I saw the scoop neck shirt.

How To Choose Cricut T Shirt Designs For Any Occasion

Clicking on it will make it appear on the canvas. Now you can change the type, size and color to see exactly how it will look.

I’m not too picky about the color part, but I like to see how big the ironed image will look on my shirt.

Then I move the text to the center of the shirt and use the double arrow circle to drag it to the desired size.

I’m still measuring the shirt I’m using to make sure it’s the same size as the one on the screen.

Summer T Shirt With Layered Infusible Ink And Iron On (htv)

Sometimes when you open the file it looks fuzzy, but after downloading the SVG opens clearly.

If it doesn’t download automatically, you’ll need to right-click on it and save as such. If you need more help, be sure to check out my post on downloading and uploading files to CDS.

As a reminder, all myFREE SVG files are for personal and non-commercial use only. If you want to sell the file for commercial purposes, such as your small business, please click here to purchase a commercial license.

Cricut Maker T Shirt For Beginners

When making shirts, remember to iron them

A Step By Step Beginners Guide For Creating A Custom Shirt With The Cricut Explore Air 2

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