I’m Shocked How Many People Want This Easy DIY Gift

So, oh my goodness. I'm not gonna lie, I did not have high hopes. I think it's so cute. O-M-G, I love it. I think it looks, hold on. Hello my crafty friends, and welcome back to Vlogmas, where we are bringing you Christmas crafts, Christmas DIYs, or Christmas gifts that you can give this holiday season every single day, the month of October. Now, why are we doing this? Lots of different reasons. You all want us to get back to crafting, we're listening, but we are also getting prepped for our Christmas craft week which is going to be happening November the 3rd through the 7th. So, if you haven't signed up already, make sure you click that link down below. Get signed up because y'all, this is a free event. You do not have to pay to come. And we are going to be teaming up with some of the biggest names in the craft industry. And we're gonna be crafting for five days, five solid days. We're bringing you 20 plus crafts over this week. There's gonna be a mixture of live, pre-recorded, all of the above, and I really, really think you all are going to love it. So, make sure you get signed up. Click that link down below and get signed up. Now, if you've already signed up, you are good to go. You don't have to sign up again, but if you haven't, make sure you get signed up because you do not want to miss this. Now, in today's video, we are doing another possible Christmas gift, and I'm so excited to do this. And I wanna show you guys where we kinda got this idea. So, have you all seen people taking just regular sweaters and turning them into cardigans, like sports-themed cardigans? At first, I'm not gonna lie, I was a little bit iffy, but I really think I wanna make one because I think they would be super cute. So, let me show you what I mean. Here is one example that we saw. You can see here, we're just cutting it and turning it into a cardigan. But this is just something, she just took a sweatshirt and cut it into a cardigan. I think we can make our own and customize it to whatever you want. So, before we get started, let's go ahead and talk about everything that I have here on the craft table and what you're going to need to do this as well. So, first thing, we have a sweatshirt, just a plain sweatshirt here. Now, this is just a Hanes sweatshirt, it's nothing fancy. I did get an extra large. I'm gonna show you how you can cut this to fit. And then I will kind of, we'll play around with the sizing. I'll make sure that that sizing works. And then we'll talk about that throughout the video. Next up, we do have some HTV. Would you have guessed that we were doing Tennessee Orange? Diehard Vols fans here in the house, we can't help it. If it's not your team, that is perfectly fine. Make this that fits your team, your state, whatever you want. Next, we have just a standard grip mat. That's going to keep our heat transfer vinyl down on the mat when we cut it with our Cricut. And then we have our Cricut Mini EasyPress to put our HTV on our sweatshirt. And then finally, you need a really good pair of fabric scissors. This is going to be very important, especially when it comes to cutting your sweatshirt. You need to have a good set of fabric scissors. This is just going to ensure that you have really nice, clean, even cuts. So with that being said, I think I want to cut the sweatshirt first before adding the HTV. That way I can position my vinyl exactly where I want to. Now, the video that I showed you, the TikTok that I showed you, she just took a regular sweatshirt that was already printed on. It looked like it was probably screen printed and she just cut it herself. That is definitely doable. If you want to do that, if you don't want to customize it, maybe you have one that you want to turn into a cardigan, you can do that. But we're going to make our own with HTV. So with that being said, let's go ahead and put our sweatshirt on and let's get it cut. And then we will jump into design space. I already cut the gray sweatshirt that I was turning into a cardigan and I still am turning into a cardigan and thought that I hit record on the whole cutting process and did not. So that is why you see me in a black cardigan and I'm going to show you how to cut and how to measure to cut your cardigan. So this one is a little bit smaller than the gray one. Not a problem. No matter what, if you are wanting an oversized cardigan look, you do need to go ahead and order a sweatshirt a size larger. If you want a more fitted look, you need to order your true size. So I did grab some of these little sewing clips. That's going to help us determine where we want to cut our sweatshirt. So that's going to help us determine where we want to cut our sweatshirt. Now, if you want it longer, I would suggest just cutting the bottom band here. Don't worry about cutting up forward, cutting higher. Another thing that you need to consider is this material is going to roll a little bit. It's probably not going to fray, but it will roll. So if you think you want it shorter, mark it, but then we're going to move it down just a tad. That way it doesn't look like a cropped cardigan. We are not looking for a cropped cardigan. So this one, the band is a little tight. You know how sweatshirts normally are, but I'm going to pull it all the way down because once we take that band off, it's going to sit exactly where it needs to. So from there, you can determine if you want it longer, you're just going to cut the band off. If you want it shorter, we just kind of want to mark where we want it to hit. So for this one, I'm thinking I want it to hit about the hip area. So I'm going to take my clip and I'm just going to clip it right here on the side. You can see. And now I can take this off and lay it down on our cutting mat. So here is the gray one that I did cut. I'm going to also cut this black one and show you the difference in the two. We'll just move this one to the side and I'll show you how I did it. So what we're going to do is we're going to lay this down. Now, I did get out this cutting mat. If you have one, you can go ahead and grab one. And it's just going to help you kind of keep everything straight. You can see that clip is not laying straight. So I'm going to keep it kind of the same, but move this out and we'll clip it right there. Beautiful. Let me move this up so we can see it better. Now, what I'm going to do with this one is I want this to line up. And this is actually, if you're having issues getting it to line up and it's bunching like this because of this, I might first cut this bottom off like this bottom band off before cutting here. So I'm just going to cut along this band. And if it makes it easier for you, you can kind of cut it in different sections. So I want to get it even. So I'm going to cut right along the top of the stitch and I'm separating both the top and bottom layer because this is, if your sweatshirt is bunching like this, I would suggest separating that top and bottom layer. That way we can get an even cut across like that. Then I'm just going to come here and cut the bottom half of the sweatshirt, just like that. And now it lays flat so much better than what it was. So what I'm going to do, and this is what I did. And if you want to, if you cut the bottom band off, we can try it on again and see where it sits now. So let's just do that. So now that we have the bottom band off and I just moved my clip, we can see that it's still just a little bit longer. I don't hate this length. Let me, let me get a little closer. I don't hate this length. I still want it to be more sitting like right here. So I'm going to just clip this here, kind of like right there. Remember, we have to give a little bit of room for the roll. So I'm going to clip it right here again. I'm going to take it back off. We'll lay it back down and then we'll determine where we're going to cut it. So I've still got it clipped. Sorry if my mic was muffled. I forgot that I had it on when I put this sweatshirt on. So you can see when it clips, when I clip it, I think I'm clipping it at the actual edge and I'm not. So I'm just going to take this and just move it out here like that. So now what I'm going to do to make sure that I get a really good cut all the way across, I'm going to line the bottom of this up. And actually you can see right here, it didn't, you can see right here when I cut it, the bottom part didn't cut all the way straight. Not really a problem. But what I'm going to do is I'm going to line the bottom of this thing up with a number. So we have it lined up with 19 and I'm going to make sure that I get this straight. So we want the corner to come down here because this corner is lined up here. So I want this corner to also line up on this edge. And then what I'm going to do, making sure that this stays at 19. When you are cutting, so cutting through double layer is probably going to be easier with a rotary blade. And one thing to think about when you are cutting, we, to cut a straight line, unless you want to measure it yourself, you can still get a really good straight line. And here is my trick. When I'm cutting, I want to look at where I'm going, not where I'm cutting here, like not exactly where I'm cutting, but I want to keep my eye over here on this 19 so that I keep a straight line all the way across. So let me show you how I do this. So once again, I'm starting here and I'm going to look at where I'm going. And I'm not going to worry as much about cutting through both layers of fabric right now, as I am about getting to the other side and keeping my line straight and keeping my eye on that 19 mark on the other side. So do you all see how I was able to get that straight and not really have to measure? So now what I can do is I can come back over here and cut away any pieces that maybe didn't cut all the way through. Now, if you're not an eyeballer and you want to measure it, that is perfectly fine. Usually I do, but I'm taking one from Alicia's book right now and just measuring with my heart. And now we have a pretty nice straight cut all the way across. So we can try this back on. So now that we have this tried back on, this is really where I was wanting this cardigan to hit. Now we are ready to cut up the center. So I'm also going to cut the gray one up the center too. We'll decide which color we like once we get them both cut and see how they look. But for those that are curious, let me give you the actual dimensions of how much I cut off the gray one. So I'm going to measure that. Give me just a second. I cut off right at five inches on the gray one. And with the combine, let's do this one. So honestly, I cut about five, five and a half inches off of both of them. Now the gray one is going to be a little bit longer because it is a larger size cardigan. And I can show you the difference. So here is where it hits me on a large with five inches cut off the bottom right at the hip. Now, just for reference, I am five, six. So it's going to determine, your body makeup is going to determine a lot of how much you need to cut off. Once again, cut off a little bit. You can always cut off more. You can't cut off a lot and add more to the bottom unless you sew in extra fabric. So just keep that in mind. I will then, I'm going to put on the gray one and show you where it hits me. And here is the extra large. It does hit a little bit lower. It is a little bit more roomy. So I'm curious to see how it's going to look once we cut it up the middle, but let's go ahead and cut them both up the middle. And then we're going to hop into design space and we're going to start designing our cardigan. Okay, so I'm going to start with the gray one and it does have a crease right down the middle because we did just get it out of the packaging. Now for this one, we're not going to use the rotary blade because I don't want to cut through both layers. I'm just going to use my fabric scissors and I'm going to go right along this crease. And I'll show you if you don't have the crease coming out of the package, I'm going to show you how you can find the center here in just a second. And I said, you needed a good pair of fabric scissors, but I really don't think mine are great. So I'm going to grab me another set of fabric scissors. And these might be even worse. You would think as a crafting channel, we would have some pretty good fabric scissors. Here's the bad boys. These are the good ones. Okay, that's how fabric scissors should cut. And there we have our cardigan. Let's try it on. So, oh my goodness. I'm not going to lie, y'all. I did not have high hopes for this sweatshirt cardigan, but I love it already. I think this is so cute and it's so cozy, but it also gives me, it's going to be really great for like fall, transition months, things like that. Because if I don't want to wear a full sweatshirt, but it's too cold in the morning and I want to wear like a t-shirt under it or a tank top, I think it's so cute. So let's go ahead and hop in design space and let's start designing our sweatshirt. Oh, I'm in cardigan. Okay, y'all. I said that we were hopping into design space a while ago. I know. But then as I was getting into design space, I thought to myself, we have to know the dimensions of where we're going to put our HTV. So we're back here at the table before we get into design space. So we're going to measure each side of our sweatshirt. They should be the same, but we're just going to double check. And then we're going to use those measurements as the guide once we get into design space. So grab you a measuring tape. Also something I forgot to mention that you might need in our supplies. So I'm going to go with, we don't want to, obviously we don't want to go all the way to the armpit. We probably want to say around here. So I'm going to go eight to nine inches in width there. And it's going to be about the same on the other side. It should be the same on both sides. So we'll just probably go eight, eight and a half in width. If you want to go ahead and get the height where you want to, I think we need to stay within six to seven inches here. So we'll do eight, eight and a half by seven. So now let's go to design space. So now that we are here in design space, you can see we have, I'm going to do Tennessee, T-E-N-N. We have it set up here on the canvas, but let me just hop over to Maker's Going to Learn first. The font that we're going to be using today is University. Now what you'll need to do is you'll need to go to the font section. We're going to go to University. This is the font we're using. You're going to download that by clicking that arrow pointing down and install it onto your computer if you haven't already. We have it already installed. So I'm just going to hop back over to design space. I'm going to hide this right now. And then we're going to bring in our text. We're going to change it to University right here. And then I'm also going to grab my shade. Now remember the size that we said was 8.5 in width. Yes, so we were going to do 8.5 in width and our height was going to be seven. So this is the area on either side of the cardigan that we're going to be designing. So let me change them both to gray since that's just going to represent the gray color. And now what I can do is I can type in the T-E. Let me bring it to the front. We'll change it to orange, duplicate it, and NN here. So I definitely want it to be bigger. So we'll, I think I like that. And that font size, we'll just make it an even 457. So this one we're going to do 457 so that they match. Y'all, that's going to be so cute. Now, one thing we can do with this font, you can stretch it a little bit and it would look okay. So one thing with this font is we could stretch this font and it would look good. I actually think I do like it stretched just a little bit. And we can do that by manipulating this corner here. You can make it look a little bit taller. So I think I like that. Maybe more like that. And what I might do is I might just delete that, duplicate this one and put T-E here. That way it's the exact same. I love. Now, if you wanted to add a second layer, let's say you wanted to add an offset, we can do that. I don't think I'm going to. I think I want to keep it simple. I think I want to keep this one simple. So I think we're just going to do straight orange on the gray. So now we are ready to hide our guides. I am keeping these two separate because I want them to be cut separately so I can lay them down on my cardigan. We're just going to go to make. Now I know both of these will fit on one 12 by 12 piece. And you can see here, I don't really understand why Design Space would not let that fit on there because we can clearly see it does with some extra room. We are going to turn the mirror on and then we're going to go to continue. After that, we're going to click everyday iron on and we are ready to load it onto our mat and into our Cricut. Now we are using Caesar HTV, our favorite and it comes in Tennessee orange. I know a lot of people think Tennessee orange is a God awful color and you know what? You're not wrong. You're not wrong, but I love it. I love everything about it. So it is what it is. Now, if you are new to using HTV, it is heat transfer vinyl. You need to check which side your carrier sheet is. For this one, you can clearly tell which side is the front and which side is the back. If you can't, you can always check your HTV by trying to peel away a corner. With HTV, you are going to cut it backwards because the adhesive is actually heat activated on the back and you want to make sure that you load your heat transfer vinyl with this carrier sheet. You see this clear right here. You want that on your mat and then you want the blade to cut this and that's why we mirror it. So after it's cut and we weed it and we place it right side up with this protective carrier sheet on it and the heat, it applies down to our blank. So we have loaded this carrier sheet down. We have it already set up in design space on everyday iron-on. Now all we have to do is load this into our machine. Once it registers this mat, we are going to hit the play button and it'll only take a second for us to cut our design. We're going to go ahead and press this. In the meantime, while that is cutting, we are going to turn our Cricut Mini EasyPress onto a heat setting of two and let that heat up. And then once that is done, we will weed our design and we will place it onto our cardigan. Once that's done, we're going to go ahead and unload the mat. I'm going to take my TrueControl knife and I'm just going to cut off the excess because we want to save any piece of HTV that we don't use because we could use it for another project. And now I'm just going to weed out everything on the outside. Now I'm going to take my TrueControl knife and separate these two. So now we have our TE and N. So let's go over here and add it to our cardigan. Now all I need to do is line both of these up just like this. Beautiful. Taking my Mini EasyPress on a heat setting of two. So cute. Now, how you can tell if your heat transfer vinyl has adhered really, really well is you will start to see bubbles, or not bubbles, but you will kind of see the carrier sheet start to lift off of the heat transfer vinyl. And you can see it's super easy to remove once it is done. And y'all, we are done. Let's try it on and see how it looks. So now, OMG, I love it. I think it looks, hold on. This is making it look a little bit off. It looks so cute. What do you guys think? This is such an easy project and definitely one that can be customized to a specific person. If you have a sports lover in your life, you can do that. You could do so many different things with this cardigan. You can customize it to a name. You can customize it to a state. You could do so much. But I think that this is such a cute gift. Let me know in the comments what you think. Do you love this? Do you not love this? And just so you guys know, you need to get signed up for Christmas Craft Week. I've not talked about it anymore other than in the beginning. So make sure you get signed up. Click that first link down below. And if you've liked this video, guys, it's free to just give a thumbs up for us. Subscribe to our channel and hit that bell notification so that you can be notified every single time we get crafty the month of October. You're not gonna wanna miss anything we've got in store. So make sure you subscribe and hit that bell notification so that you can be notified when we get crafty. I will see you guys in the next one.