Discuss the various aspects of heat pressed vinyl transfers. Popular and new types of vinyl media, suppliers, vinyl cutters /plotters, press times, quality, how to instructions and more can be found in this heat press sub forum.
If you had to print the letter A on a shirt that's white with a thin red outline and then another blue outline, how would you do it?
Would you cut a big blue A, and then lay a red A on that followed by a little white A on top? That would make each color the same thickness all the way across. It would also distort each letter making the outlines lopsided.
You could make a big white A that would be the foundation, and a red a that goes on top with a bigger gap to let the white come through followed by a blue outline. That would also make it each color the same thickness, but would be stacked in reverse order. You still have the problem of it distorting, but the outline is pressed last, so the distortion should be minimal.
You could cut the red and blue as outlines and only overlap them a tiny bit. That would make a ridge in the colors, but should help with the distortion.
You could make it so the outlines line up perfectly with no overlapping. Avoiding distortion when the first color is pressed seems impossible.
I did to press a multi-color design, but don't know how to handle the distortion after the first color is pressed.
I'd personally cut a big blue A, then the smaller red, then the small white and then layer them. With the registration marks you should be able to align it without distortion.
Thanks for the reply. I should have mentioned this was for heat press vinyl. The blue A will distort a little under the heat and pressure of being applied. Then when you press the red A, it doesn't perfectly line up, even with the registration marks. Finally, the white A is really off since the blue was pressed twice and the red was pressed once.
Ahh ok, I have no knowledge yet on t-shirts so I'll have to pass on that. I know what you're saying, and all I can think of is that you make the overlap bigger than you intend it to be for the final result for the blue and red to take into account the factor of the shrinking.
What flex material are you using? This is something I am going to have to work on soon when I start on t-shirts, so maybe we can come up with a solution for this together.
After pressing a few easy designs, that was my theory. Then I had a few hard designs that peeling off the vinyl, lining up, and then pressing seems impossible. If the design was the similar A, but for USA or the name on the back of a jersey. You have to worry about peeling off each letter and making sure they are evenly spaced and aligned vertically with the other letters.
I used Spectra Cut in the past. Now, I use Siser Easyweed. I haven't done any multicolor designs with the Easyweed yet, but I will sometime this week. I was kind of hoping someone knew of a solution before I started.
Overlap Multi-Color Designs? 
