Heat transfer Vinyl (HTV) is a special kind of vinyl polymer. It use on certain kinds of fabrics to make designs and custom DIY art, especially for DIY T-shirt, bags, shoes decoration. This comes with an heat seal glue backing, and as the name suggests, you can heat transfer on clothing by heat application. There are heat press machine, iron after cutting by plotter such as cameo, cricut or even scissors. You can create your own special gift t-shirt with whatever your loved vinyl designs on it. Let’s start to know what is heat transfer vinyl.

Types of heat transfer vinyl

Heat transfer vinyl comes in rolls and sheets, and you can find many single solid and patterned colors and designs. Also there is many different types of transfer vinyl roll. For example pvc htv, pu vinyl, glitter htv vinyl, glow in the dark textile vinyl, holographic foil heat transfer film, reflective htv vinyl roll, flock iron on vinyl, patterned plotter cut vinyl, glossy or matte surface all available. You can also find as heat transfer vinyl sheets and quite popular selling on Amazon. Seaart have already been supporting many success amazon sellers.  There is always a suitable heat transfer vinyl available for your t-shirt,bag,shoes.

There are also printable heat transfer vinyl. You can print it by eco solvent ink with an eco solvent or UV printer. You can print any colorful designs on the vinyl and cut out and transfer on your clothing.

The process of using heat transfer vinyl is quite simple. You can cut the material by plotter or laser, weed extra parts and heat pressed on apparel. If you have cricut desktop plotter, just design in computer. Then simply input to cricut and you get what you need. For a small business, better to use larger plotter like 24” or 48”. It’s quite high efficient to cut any vinyls.  You can find how to cut heat transfer vinyl more details in our shop in different videos.

You can find the transfer vinyl from small sheets like 10 x 12 inches to rolls. These textile vinyl rolls can be up to 24 inches x 164 feet. Its typical sizes are 20” and 24” wide rolls with lengths of 1 yard, 5 yard, 10 yard, 25 yard, and 50 yards or meters.

Transfer vinyl mainly produced in Italy, Korea and China. Siser as No. 1 brand is widely using in garment customized logo industry. It’s highest cost one, most popular using. Korea vinyl for tshirt is also using a long time. China iron on vinyl for clothing is just starting 2-3years ago, but it has been developing very fast in the market and gain the market quickly. Seaart brand is one of the China famous brand to make and sell various thermo transfer vinyl rolls and we have already USA warehouses to serve our  US customers.

Usage in the clothing industry

Heat transfer film vinyl product is a highly preferred option when fabric items like T-shirts and garments need to be customized with fancy artwork and images. HTV makes such kind of customization very easy for small businesses.

Vinyl plotter can cut the material like Silhouette CAMEO or Brother ScanNCut, Cricut. Using these tools, you can cut digitally the designs and then simply transfer onto the garment.

As the nature of the vinyl is such, you must apply it on products that can endure the heat and pressure that is necessary to make the material stick on it. Therefore, traditionally, HTV is placed on textile products. For clothing fabrics, the temperature range is from 250-300°F or 120-150°C. Thus, it is very important to use the correct type of vinyl with the correct type of substrate. That is why almost every vinyl manufacturer mentions the product list that can be used for each type of vinyl.

Conclusion

To conclude this small introduction to the heat press vinyl, when it comes to clothing customization or just spicing up a simple T-shirt with a quirky, custom art, there is nothing better and quicker than using HTV to achieve it.

You can look at the wide range of options available in the heat vinyl market, it is safe to say that every customer will find something that suits his/her taste. Whether you want a plain garment to look a little trendy, or you want to completely upscale the look with bling, heat transfer vinyl has all the options to bring your vision onto the fabric!