Hi fellow makers!
Carrie with Designed to be Craftey showing you how to use some Color Chimp Flock heat transfer material to customize an inexpensive comforter into a fun personalized design. My youngest son has been patiently waiting for me to design his room into something he really loves now that he's old enough to express himself. His loves are all things planes and trains! His Papa is a pilot and going to the airport to watch the small planes is always the best.day.ever! I've tried searching the web for a non-cheesy looking planes and trains comforter and I just could never find anything that didn't look like a giant cartoon drawing. So what's a crafty designer momma to do? Make one myself of course! I was lucky to partner with Craftey to bring you this DIY today showing you how simple it is to customize plain store-bought house goods and create something unique and perfect for your space.
The Supply List:
- Color Chimp Flock Heat Transfer Vinyl (I'm using Navy Blue, Anthracite, and Grey)
- Store-Bought Comforter (This is similar to the one I used since mine is discontinued)
- Silhouette Cameo (or similar type machine)
- Pressing Cloths
- Weeding Tool
- Iron
Step One: Create Your Designs
I went through the Silhouette design store and found these designs to use for my project: Airplane 1, Airplane 2, Airplane with Banner, and Train. I sized them and colored them in with colors like my heat transfer material so I could print them out and arrange them on my actual comforter. I wanted to make sure I had the scale correct and play with them so I could figure out how many of each design I'd need to cut out.
I simply just roughly cut them out with scissors and placed them on the material, just keep moving them around until you're happy with the design.
For the large comforter, I pinned them in place using sewing pins. I didn't want to lose all the work I spent time doing while I cut out the actual heat transfer material.
Step Two: Customize the Banner Design
I couldn't just leave the banner empty! Here's how to add words inside the banner: Type out the word, I'm using the font Intellecta Typewriter.
Then scale it down to fit inside the banner and double click it to get the green box around the word. Click the circle in the lower left corner until it touches the top of the banner. You'll see it changes to wrap the surface and you can move it around until you like what you see.
To keep the original shape and the new word shape, right-click to pull up the shortcut menu and select convert to path.
Finally, select the whole design and right-click to pull up the menu again and make it a compound path.
Step Three: Replicate the Designs and Cut
Now that your designs are set, replicate them as many times as you need and don't forget to flip them horizontally if they have words or a specific direction since this is heat transfer material and you cut on the back of the material.
Send the designs to be cut! Make sure to adjust your cutting settings and do a test cut before sending the full design.
Step 4: Cut and Weed the Designs
First I wanted to show you a quick trick for cutting down larger material to fit on your cutting mat easily. Place it on the mat to the size needed, then flip it over and use scissors to cut it down since you can see the correct edge. Simple right?!?
Now load the cutting mat into the machine to do your test cut and your final cuts too. As you can see I did 3 test cuts to make sure it was perfect. 
I always like to cut the designs apart before I weed them. The flocked material will leave fuzzy bits behind on the carrier sheet but it won't stick to your fabric. Repeat this for all of the various designs. 
Step Five: Iron them on.
Here's another handy tip for you! You can use these pressing cloths to cover your designs with to protect them from melting while ironing them on. 
Place the design on the comforter, cover it up, and press for about 10 seconds.
I set my iron to the wool setting and turned off the steam. I used the cooler iron so I didn't melt the inner fluff layer inside the comforter. (yes I learned this the hard way after ironing on one design, oops!!).
The color chimp flocked is a cold peel material so you'll need to wait a minute before pulling off the carrier sheet. Repeat until the whole comforter is complete!
I ended up making mine an ombré effect too, using the navy at the bottom for the trains and then the anthracite color for the middle layer of airplanes, and finally the grey for the airplanes at the top.
My son wanted to pose with his new comforter too! He loves it and kept touching the soft designs too. 
I mean, that's one happy little boy!! I love being able to make something special just for him while keeping a design aesthetic that will grow up with him too. 
I hope that's helped to inspire you to think outside the "big box store" for your next bedding set! You aren't stuck buying the limited designs they offer and can see them as blank slates instead.
Here's a pin so you remember this for later!
What are your kid's favorite themes? Let us know in the comments below!
