Tutorials

For all you team moms and dads out there, check out this project for how to DIY a personalized backpack made from sports material. In this tutorial, you'll learn how to heat press on these sports drawstring bags and how to prevent burn marks and scorch marks from your heat press on the final project.

Use your cutting machine of choice to cut and weed a personalized design into heat transfer vinyl. Note: weeding HTV on your heat press can make the process go much easier and faster.

The stacked text design used in this project is a font found in the December Design Bundle.

Here are the bags we are using. They are thin, slick, sports bag material and the manufacturer states they are made of polyester. If you can, get at least one more bag than you need, so you can use it for a test press (or possibly several test presses).

We're using Siser Easyweed HTV which is pressed at 305 degrees F for 10-15 seconds. Using the extra bag to test on, place it on the heat press with the bottom metal grommets hanging off the edge with a pressing pillow placed inside.

Place the weeded transfer face down and cover with a piece of parchment. Then, do your first test press using the HTV manufacturers recommendations for time and temperature.

After pressing, remove the carrier sheet carefully. If you notice burn marks or scorch marks from your heat press, then you'll need to make adjustments. Siser says that Easyweed can be used at a temperature as low as 280 degrees F, but you'll need to increase press time to 20 to 30 seconds. This is why having an extra bag to do your test press with is really helpful!

Luckily, our test press came out perfect with the recommended press settings for Siser Easyweed! So, we made another using the same settings from our successful test press.

These sports backpacks are such a popular item right now and it's easy it is to personalize them with a trendy font once you've got the right settings!

Grab the stacked font we used for these sports bags from the December Design Bundle.