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HOW TO USE COLOR-CHANGING HTV

Make fun shirts and other apparel with Cricut color-changing HTV / iron-on! For this project, I'm making a "surprise" rainbow shirt—looks white indoors, but once you're in the sun it's covered in rainbows!
Keyword: Color-Changing HTV, Rainbow
Author: Cori George

Equipment

Ingredients

Instructions

  • Tips for Using Cricut Color Changing Iron-On
    Keep your packaging! All of the colors look identical to white iron-on unless they are in the sunlight and you may end up using a color-changing HTV instead of regular white if you don't keep things in their packages or labeled well.
    Got your scraps mixed up? Buy a small UV light for testing your HTV.
    The HTV is not the same as hypercolor. It's UV-activated, not heat-activated. So when you press it with your heat press, it won't change color.
    Think about your garment's color—you want it to look good with both white and the color it changes into in the sun. BELLA+CANVAS has more than 300 colors to choose from, so there are a ton of options that will work for your project!
  • What is the "Cut Through" Method for HTV?
    For this project, we are not going to be weeding the HTV. Instead, we are going to be using the "heavy cardstock" material setting to cut all the way through the carrier sheet. This allows you to place the rainbows on the shirt more easily, as you'll see! Plus it saves time because there's no weeding step.
    Let's make a shirt!
  • Set up the file in Cricut Design Space
    Upload the rainbow file to Cricut Design Space (see this post How to Upload SVG Files to Cricut Design Space for more information). The rainbow will be very large.
  • Resize the rainbow for your shirt. For this project small rainbows are being put all over the shirt, but you could also do one large rainbow if you'd like. The small rainbow for this project is 2.5" wide.
  • Then the rainbow design was duplicated the so that there were 15 copies. If you're doing a larger rainbow, skip this step.
  • Then hit Make It in the upper right to make your project. You'll first be asked how you want to load your material. In this case, we'll be putting it on a Cricut mat, so choose On Mat.
  • Cricut Design Space will lay out all of your rainbow pieces on the mat.
  • If you'd like, you can move your pieces around on your mat to save space. For this project this was done only on the yellow and pink mats—as it felt like the material savings on blue mat wasn't worth my time and effort, but you can do that if you'd like.
    Click Continue. In the Make Screen, choose Heavy Cardstock for your material cut settings. This will cut entirely through the carrier sheet of your material, leaving you with individual rainbow pieces.
  • Cut Your Rainbows
    Place your material on your mat with the shiny side down. You can see that the blue color-changing HTV just looks white right out of the package.
  • Place your mat into your machine and press the blinking Go button. Your Cricut will cut your rainbow pieces. When you peel back the material from the mat, you'll see that the pieces remain on the mat. Remove the pieces from the mat as well, making sure to remove them carefully so they don't rip or stretch.
    Repeat with the other colors of HTV until you have all of your rainbow pieces.
  • Assembling Your Rainbow Shirt
    Then place your shirt on the heat-resistant mat and assemble your first rainbow. You'll see that because we used the cut-through method, we don't have to iron each piece individually. We can adhere all four at once!
  • Use a piece of heat-resistant tape to secure your rainbow to the shirt and to make it easier to iron.
  • To adhere the HTV rainbow, A EasyPress Mini was used for this project as it allows movement from one rainbow to the next and adheres them easily. You could also use a standard EasyPress or other heat press, The second heat setting and medium pressure was used.
  • Then carefully peel back the carrier sheet and the tape. I found that I could peel up the ends of one side of the rainbow and "follow" it around the rainbow and both the carrier sheet pieces and the tape would come up at once.
  • Repeat with the rest of the rainbows. For this project the rest of them were taped all at once, and then ironed all at the same time.
  • Made quick work of the rainbows! Here's what the finished shirt looks like indoors.
  • Then the magic happens! Take your new shirt outside and watch how quickly the sun turns the white rainbows into colored rainbows! Such vibrant colors—it's hard to believe that it takes just a few seconds to return to white after you're back indoors.
  • Caring for Your Color-Changing HTV Shirt
    To make your color-changing shirt last as long as possible, It is suggested to hand wash or delicate wash in the machine with a mild detergent. Let air dry.
    If you want to make this project, make sure to grab a soft and comfortable BELLA+CANVAS tee!