What is Heat Transfer Vinyl?

This is our third post in a short trilogy of blog posts on the most common types of vinyl used for crafting. If you haven’t seen the first two, check out our What is 651 Vinyl? and What is 631 Vinyl? articles. Today, as we wrap up this series, we will be focusing on Heat Transfer Vinyl, often simply referred to as HTV.

Heat Transfer Vinyl is what you’re going to want to use when working on any projects involving these materials:

• Clothing
• Tote bags
• Pillowcases
• Flip flops
• Decorative pillows
• Blankets
• Kitchen Towels
• Any other piece of fabric you want to fancy up!

Using Heat Transfer Vinyl is fairly simple, although the steps vary a bit from 631 or 651 vinyl projects:

1. Design your project in whichever design studio you use the same way you would any vinyl project.
2. When you are cutting your image, make sure the plastic side of the vinyl is face-down (on the loading mat) and be sure to mirror your image when cutting from your design studio…unless, of course, you like to carry a mirror around with you to see it correctly.
3. Cut out, weed, and peel your image.
4. Place the image on your material and use another piece of material as a barrier. Then, using a heat press or iron, place even heat across the cutout image until it firmly adheres to the material surface.
5. Remove the backing from the vinyl, and voila! You have completed your Heat Transfer Vinyl project!

Click here to see our recent tutorial video on using HTV, and don’t forget to shop our wide variety of Siser Heat Transfer Vinyl.