Of all my favorite ways to make cool t-shirts here working at Coastal Business, I am especially partial to vinyl transfers. They’re light in hand, with great durability, and come in a wide variety of colors, textures, and even special effects to really make a t-shirt design POP at a customer. And when your mind is on your design, it’s nice to have a product like EasyWeed to take the additional guesswork out of creating your garment.
EasyWeed, the family of heat transfer vinyl by Siser, is a popular choice for apparel decorators. It’s simple to cut and apply, works well on a wide variety of fabric types, and appeals to customers due to its soft, thin properties. It’s also been around for quite awhile, so the company has earned a pretty good reputation in the industry for making a consistently performing product.
EasyWeed is a one step application, and because of its tacky adhesive plastic carrier, it is very easy to weed, even with intricate designs and small lettering. It also has a thickness of just 85-90 microns, and performs better than other similar heat transfer vinyls due to its uniquely soft hand on the garments. It excels at even the smallest of details: some vinyls on the market have tinted white adhesive to make a light or fluorescent color more opaque, which ends up being an obvious, oozing mess, especially on dark shirts. EasyWeed is made with a thin white liner to tackle the opacity problem with these light colors, for a much more reliable and satisfactory result.
Aside from all the other reasons why EasyWeed is great, it all boils down to the one thing… it’s EASY. It applies at a low temperature, so you don’t have to worry about scorching or dye-migration, and you can apply with a home iron (though best results will definitely be with a commercial heat press). It only requires light to medium pressure, so less effort is needed. It also can be layered very easily, whereas other products may have compatibility issues with certain lines layering with another, and sometimes even certain colors from the same product can’t be layered!
And speaking of layering, that’s where EasyWeed really stands out of the pack. The adhesive will stick within a 1-2 second press, so countless layers can be applied (no more than 2-3 if they’re on top of one another) quickly with no problems with over-curing or scorching. If you butt-register (no giggling, it means the adjacent vinyls touch without overlapping), this short press time also helps out because the material cannot move, and aligns easier.
If you have a vinyl cutter and you’re thinking of getting into doing heat transfer vinyl for your customers, give EasyWeed a shot! It’s a great method for short run orders, or achieving special effects that were out of your reach before. And it’s not limited to just t-shirts — this material could potentially be used for customized sweat wear, socks, bags, blankets, pillows, hats… you name it!
Hello. Brand new to htv, will be trying my first design tomorrow. I have a question about the Easy Weed. I have purchased both regular easy weed and stretch. HOW can you easily tell them apart? Or can you? Thank you!Whitney
When you feel the vinyl you will notice that the Stretch has a more rubbery feel to it than the regular Easyweed. Also, if you peel up just a corner of the vinyl and pull the Stretch will be much more elastic feeling.