Saturday, October 9, 2010

Iron-on Letters

As an early Christmas gift, my parents bought me a Cricut! I've had lots of fun experimenting with it. I remember seeing on that Cricut infomercial a few years ago that you can cut fabric with the Cricut. So cool. I wanted to use it to cut out the letters for our names to go on our Christmas stockings (See below)....
You will need:
1) Fabric: Any cotton fabric should do. To save you any of the blood sweat and tears I went through make sure NOT to get the little fabric samples. There's a reason they are samples--they're flimsy and they DO NOT work on the Cricut. Get the fabric FROM THE SHELF! Even if you don't feel like going to the counter and getting it cut.
2) Iron-on Adhesive: Again, listen to Brittany. This will save you many tears. I bought some Steam-a-seam iron-on adhesive that I saw a girl use in a YouTube video. This is no good. You need to get Heat'n Bond. Seriously, so many tears.

And 3) Cricut.

Instructions:
Cut the desired size of fabric and cut the same size of iron-on. Iron adhesive to fabric according to directions (fabric side down; iron for a few seconds).
Adhere fabric to mat. I used blue painters tape to keep the fabric from slipping. Works well. Adjust pressure settings to the highest and adjust the speed to 1 or 2.
Cut your fabric. You may have to snip a few parts of the letter that didn't cut all the way through. Shouldn't be too bad.
Then iron the letters to your project and...VOILA!

And you don't HAVE to have a Cricut to do this. You can trace letters on to the paper backing of the iron-on and use scissors to cut them out. It just won't look as neat as the Cricut cut-outs and will take longer.

3 comments:

alecia said...

Wow!I have never wanted a Cricket until now! How inspiring and lovely! I own tons of heat n bond already! And fabric... Just need the Cricket... You're so creative! Sorry about the tears.

PS I miss you. Terribly.

LeAnn said...

You inspire me! I'm so impressed your stockings are already done. They are on my list, but if I don't get busy soon I'm going to run out of time...again ;)

alecia said...

ok, I gotta do this this week! Without the cricket. Wish me luck.