Even though I’ve got the summertime’s ending blues, I can still appreciate fall.
I mean the cooler temperatures, fall festivals, pumpkin patches, and beautiful leaves are some of the bigger allures of the season. I’m not a fan of pumpkin spice (*gasp*), but I can appreciate the seasonal food no doubt.
And truly one of my favorite things to do in fall is decorate the house. There are the cutest fall decorations just begging to be bought at Hobby Lobby and there are SO many cute DIY projects! I went ahead and ticked one off my checklist today and wanted to share a quick tutorial and free SVG! This tutorial walks you step by step through my process making this flag AND also tells you how to apply HTV to burlap!
I made a fall garden flag last year but it was a wet fall and it got more weathered than usual (plus I left it out waaaaayyyy to long ie. “happy fall y’all”- its January!). So this year I whipped up a new design.
I actually tried to make it a little symbolic of our family. I envision it as Papa Pumpkin, Mama Pumpkin and kiddo pumpkins. I thought about further personalising it but wanted to keep the design simple and un-cluttered. Even though I made it with my household in mind, it still makes a super cute fall decoration even if your family demographics aren’t identical to mine.
You can grab my free SVG by heading over to my Freebies page. Obviously, it won’t have your name on it, but that can be added fairly easily. I used the Bigshine font which purchased a commercial license for through fontbundles.net. If you don’t want to buy a font, I am sure you can find something similar fairly easily.
Craftiness Level (0-10): 5
Time Investment:15 minutes (not including design time)
Materials:
- Blank garden flag
- Vinyl (HTV)
- heat press and/or iron
- teflon sheet
- Silhouette or other die-cut machine
- Silhouette Studio or other design software
- weeding tools
For your convenience, this post contains affiliate links. If you purchase from these links I may make a small commission at no cost to you.
Step 1: Create (or import) your design
Work up a design in Silhouette Studio or import one you wish to use. When I import it, I make
sure my work area is already set to the perimeters of whatever product I am working with. In
this case my flag is 11X12.
I adjusted the design until it was the size I liked, and then ungrouped (right click – ungroup) my
design. Since there are multiple colors in the design, you will need to cut them seperately. On
my flag, I cut all of the words and pumpkin stems in a dark brown, then left the pumpkins
orange and stems green. Below you can see how I grouped the bodies of the pumpkins by
color to be cut separately.
Step 2: Cut & weed your design
Since we are using HTV for this project, you will need to make sure you place your material
shiny side DOWN on your cutting mat. Check your settings in your machine and make sure
they are correct. I find HTV to be a little difficult for my machine to cut smoothly, so I have to
adjust mine a bit. Be sure to weld (right click – weld) your design if necessary. Also, since you
are cutting HTV be sure to mirror (right click – flip horizontal) your design!
After cutting, you will need to carefully weed your design. As I have mentioned in previous
tutorials, I often use a razor to create lines in between text to make it easier to weed. Be sure to
get the middles and small pieces – my design has a few that hide pretty well!
Step 3: Adhere your design to the flag and press
The easiest way to do apply HTV is using a heat press. You will need to set the temperature per
manufacturers instructions. Most HTV is 305. You can also do it using an iron, and some
designs may require you go over smaller lines with an iron anyways.
Once your design has been weeded, you will need to center it on the flag, transfer sheet up.
Typically with most burlap garden flags you will need to put a small towel underneath to make
sure the pressure is even over the whole surface. The seams (or in my case ruffles) prevent the
middle of the flag from getting throughly pressed if you don’t. Once you’re ready to press, you
will need to place a teflon sheet over the clear transfer sheet. Your initial press will need to be
about 20 seconds
In my design, the pumpkins are overlapping so you will need to press them one at a time. You
can see in the image above, I started with one and below you can see how I did the two outer
pumpkins last. Each time I pressed I did so for about 10-15 seconds.
If the vinyl appears to completely adhered already at this point you can skip to step 5. If not,
see step 4.
Step 4: Use iron to get thin pieces.
This step may not be necessary on other designs. Because I chose such a thin, script font, my
heat press had trouble getting all those wispy lines. So I pulled out the iron and did those again
individually. I also went ahead and added the stem and leaves since they were smaller parts of
the design.
Do not move the iron while pressing or your vinyl may warp. Also, be sure to add a towel below
your material. I press down very firmly in different spots a couple of times to make sure it is on
there completely. Once it has adhered, pull off the transfer sheet.
Step 5: Press again with heat press.
Since burlap can be a little bit trickier to get HTV applied to, it this step is like extra insurance. It
makes sure that that vinyl is really good and melted into the HTV.
For that extra adhesion, flip the flag over and press it again for 20-30 seconds. Be sure to place
a towel underneath to make sure your seams are all flush. Once you’re done pressing, you will
be able to see the fibers of the burlap coming through the vinyl as proof it is melted on there!
And that’s it! Easy peasy, y’all! These are so versatile and fun to make! My goal this year is to
make a new flag for every season! I will try and update this post as I do them and share my
SVGs!!
Prefer to buy them, or want to shop my other designs? Visit my Etsy store,
here. And don’t
forget to follow me on
Pinterest. I pin tons of great DIY projects, including my own!
