JPSS

Sharing is caring!

Affilate links enclosed

I know t-shirt vinyl is all the rage right now. There is also the new comer of Cricut infusible ink. These products are great and they are really easy to use. When I need a design done quickly and not a lot of money to spend. I turn to a great product. Jet pro soft stretch t-shirt heat press transfers. What is the Jet Pro Soft Stretch Heat transfer paper? Well Im glad you asked.

JET PRO Soft Stretch Heat Transfer Paper is a transfer paper that produces a soft hand yet vibrant and wash-durable ink jet printed transfers to white and light colored cotton, cotton/poly blends and 100% polyester fabrics. The transfer can be used to apply designs and can be trimmed to reduce the transfer of the polymer background.

Football t-shirts

This year I coached my son and his youth football team affectionately call the Mighty Mites. Which is also their age division because they are the youngest in the league. We had a great year and went undefeated. These young boys played great and improved their knowledge of the game ten-fold. I had a blast coaching and would do it again if asked back.

We had a team yell that we did after every practice and game. “Who are We? LOBOS! What do We Do? Work! What do We Do? WIN! Lobos on 3, 123 LOBOS!” I wanted to make t-shirts with that saying on it for the boys but I didn’t want to go broke in the process. So I went to my Jet Pro Soft Stretch heat press transfers. The transfers come in two sizes. 8.5x11in and 11x17in. Plan ahead and purchase the size you will need. The rest of this post is the tutorial how to do it.

JPSS Tutorial

Supplies needed for this tutorial are: 1 Jet pro soft stretch transfers. I chose the light transfer paper as my t-shirts that I had purchased were white. They also sell a different transfer paper for dark colored fabrics. So in this case go with the color of your material. 2. T-shirts. As already mentioned I purchased white. I had two reasons. The first because I already had a supply of the transfer paper that I had purchased for a previous project. The second reason is that White shirts were the least expensive. Like I had said before I didn’t want to go broke with this project. I purchase all of my shirts form JiffyShirts. They carry many different brands at the cheapest prices I have been able to find.

You also need a good inkjet printer. It is recommended to use an inkjet printer with pigment inks but regular ink will also work for you. Of course a computer with a good vector based software program will really help the process. I recommend CorelDraw. It is easy to learn but if you already know and use something else. Go with what you know how to use and what you have easy access to.

Design plan

Now it is time to design. Hopefully you have been contemplating what you want to put on your shirt. Their is a quote attributed to Benjamin Franklin “If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail!” I use this quote a lot in my posts because it is wise advice. I think I will make it my new motto. Seriously take the extra time and plan everything and you’ll be pleasantly surprised how smoothly things will turn out. This applies in life, your craft projects and everything you tackle.

Just remember that you either have to keep your design inside the 8.5×11 or 11×17 depending on your transfer paper that you had purchased. Most of my designs have been 8.5×11. After you have decided what you wanted to apply to your shirt you get to set the project in motion. Using your software set up the design according to your plan. Know your printer because what you see is what you get when it comes out of the printer.

Printing your Jet Pro soft stretch transfer

There are a few things to remember when it comes time to run your design through the printer. Make sure you set your printer to print the design on the blank side of the transfer. On the transfer paper one side has light blue writing and the other side is blank. Use standard printing settings for plain paper, and at a medium image quality level. Single-sheet feeding is recommended but I have ran multiple pages through at a time with success every time.
Another key point to remember is to print your design in reverse or mirrored format. This is easily done through the printer’s software. For example on my HP printer I click on print as if I am printing my design. Then I click on the prepress option.Next I click the box next to the mirror option.

 

 

That sets up your design to be reversed.

 

Now just send your design to the printer.  It should print out in reverse if you followed the steps above.

Pressing your t-shirt

First off if you chose a light color shirt to use this next step isn’t as important, but still helps the overall feel of your shirt.  Trim away the excess white border. around your design.  This prevents that extra polymer film from being transfered to your shirt.

To prepare your shirt for pressing of the transfer make sure it is clean, dry an wrinkle free.  You can give the shirt a short ten second pressing in your heat press to remove any moisture and make sure you have a smooth wrinkle free shirt to work with

Heat press TRANSFER INSTRUCTIONS

1. Place the transfer on top of the shirt with the image side down touching the material (backing paper is facing you).

2. Press for 30 seconds @ 375°F using medium/heavy pressure.

3. Peel the paper while still hot in a smooth even motion. (Paper may be peeled at any temperature, depending on what end ‘feel’ results are preferred).

4. For best “hand”, stretch the garment while hot.

 

You can also use a hand iron with these transfers.  Although I don’t have a lot of success myself using an iron.  Many people rave about it.

1. Preheat your iron to its highest setting – do NOT use steam in this process. (empty all water).

2. Iron on a SMOOTH rock hard surface; do NOT use an ironing board as there is to much give in it.  It doesn’t allow you enough solid pressure on your transfer design.

3. Place a pillowcase on the surface and iron the pillowcase removing any wrinkles. 4. t-shirt on pillowcase and iron it to remove wrinkles.

Iron TRANSFER INSTRUCTIONS

 1. Place image on top of garment with image facing down (backing of paper is facing you). 2. Using two hands and using heavy pressure slide the iron up and down (vertically) over the entire image for 90 seconds, then repeat going from left to right (horizontally) for 90 seconds. 3. Peel the backing paper off the image immediately after completion of ironing.