How to Cut and weed iron on vinyl for beginners

In this tutorial on weeding HTV, I’ll show you all about cutting and how to weed iron on vinyl. Follow these heat transfer vinyl Cricut instructions and you will have your iron-on vinyl ready to apply to your project with an Easy Press in no time!

First off, let’s talk about the names of vinyl because they can be confusing. There are two major types of vinyl to use making vinyl projects:  adhesive vinyl and iron-on vinyl. Adhesive vinyl has different varieties including removable (or indoor) vinyl and permanent (or outdoor) vinyl.  Cricut carries both removable and permanent vinyl. Cricut iron on vinyl or heat transfer vinyl (or HTV) is vinyl that needs to have heat applied to it so that it adheres to material, most likely a type of fabric or wood. HTV is most commonly used for making custom shirts, pillow cases, totes, shoes, backpacks, etc.

Important!!

Iron on vinyl needs to be cut on MIRROR setting because the plastic backing acts as the transfer agent.  You will be flipping it over and applying heat to the plastic side so that the vinyl itself melts into the material.

Then make sure to place the vinyl on your mat SHINY SIDE DOWN.  I use a light grip mat for HTV but you could also use an older green cutting mat that has lost some stickiness.

The Cricut will tell you when it’s done on the screen and also the arrow light will flash again.  Unload the mat, add your next iron on vinyl, and do it again.

I hook a piece of the iron-on vinyl on the top corner and start pulling it to the right. The cut images should stay adhered to the plastic. Keep pulling off all the extra pieces. Then you are going to go back in with your weeding tool and weed all the little pieces out of the letters and images that shouldn’t be there.

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