Celebrate Pride Month with this Rainbow Flag Shirt vinyl project. My Daughter is part of the LGBTQ community and wanted a unique shirt for the Pride Parade. So I made this. Layering vinyl, whether it is regular vinyl or HTV, there are some tricks that can help.
What You Need:
- Rainbow colors of HTV
- A Shirt
- Iron or EasyPress or Heat Press
- Pick for weeding
Vinyl Selection for the Pride Month Rainbow Flag Shirt
You don’t need much of anything except the gold for the top layer. You just need a one inch strip of all but one of the color which you need 1.5 inches extra for the words. I used a lot of my scraps folder for this project.
Cutting the Vinyl for the Pride Month Rainbow Flag Shirt
I cut several of the strips on the same mat by moving them around on the mats. If you don’t know how to do that, watch my video.
Assembling the Pride Month Rainbow Flag Shirt
Then peel off the top layer (the gold) remove every other strip and press the first three stripes. This vinyl is a cool peel so wait for the vinyl to cool and remove the carrier strips. Then place the other three strips between the three you just pressed. Cover with a piece of parchment paper or other barrier. And then press the second set of strips. Repeat the cool and peel.
Then put the gold layer on top of the stripes, making sure that none if the stripes stick out the ends. And then place the words under it. You can add the parchment paper again but the carrier sheet for the text and the gold vinyl should cover everything. Press one final time using as much pressure as you can. I pressed twice because of the added layers.
Peel off the carrier sheets once cool and check to make sure everything is attached well. If you aren’t sure, cover with parchment paper and press again.
And your Pride Month Rainbow Flag Shirt is done!
The Layering Method
This Pride Month Rainbow Flag Shirt was made by the simple layering method. It sounds simple but there is a downside for doing it this way. It makes the vinyl a little thick and takes much more pressure.
Some vinyl does not take well to layering. Glitter vinyl, of either HTV or regular vinyl, must be the top layer and even then, it doesn’t work great. I have only worked with adhesive foil in layers once or twice and it works fine, but it is very unforgiving of mistakes.
The next problem is you are limited to two maybe three layers. This project uses lots of colors but nowhere is it thicker than two layers. The pressure you need to apply HTV gets to be more with each layer. And with either type of vinyl it gets bulky and tends to not stick well.
Remember to cover the whole project with parchment paper or some other barrier when layering HTV so you don’t burn or pull up lower layers.
In Conclusion
I hope this helps you to figure out how you want to do your multiple layer vinyl projects.