Week 9 | Vinyl Cutting

Designing and printing graphics on a sweatshirt using the vinyl cutter

Finished Design

My sweatshirt! This week I created a sweatshirt of my friend's dog Suki the italian greyhound who she is OBSESSED with. I decided to design this as a gift since her birthday was last weekend. In my opinion vinyl cutting is a form of digital fabrication because you must instruct directions using digital software to create your design to cut it out properly on the vinyl cutter.

I started creating the dog silhouette by using my friends dogs instagram account to find the photo I wanted to use of Suki.

T I decided to use the photo in her profile photo.

Then I uploaded it to photoshop and manipulated the image to create a silhouette of Suki

Then I added a circle and inverted the color so suki would be the negative space of my design.

I also added her instagram handle but then realized that the lettering was too small and did not cut correctly

Here I am adjusting the settings on vinalcuting machine so it would work for my size glitter vinyl

Uploading the vinyl

Adjusting the design and pressing print!

Then it started cutting

Here is my vinyl print unpeeled

Up close you can see how the lettering did not cut correctly because it was too small.

Here I am pre-pressing my shirt

Aligning my Suki logo

Pull the lever!

Because my text did not work the first time I created a larger text just with the words “SUKI” Printing again

Here she is complete!

My friend was very happy

Here is the link to my design files click here