FLEX FOILS EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW

If so, that's great because I'm going to show you how you can decorate fabrics at home.

Ways to decorate fabrics are really many, in this and the next posts I will try to show you some of the most popular options and show their advantages and disadvantages.

Flex foil iron-on

We can buy foils in specific colors and with different finishes, they can be smooth, glossy, matte, glitter or holographic.

You can buy them from us already cut to the size of your plotter, or cut from a 50cm wide roll at trade stores.

If you have a wider film, you can easily cut it to the right format to fit on the plotter mat.

Flex foils can be pressed on any fabric, you can decorate cotton shirts, bags, backpacks, hats, sneakers or even socks with them. We can also use them on towels or children's toys.

How do you work with such a foil?
It's very simple, we lay the sheet of film on the plotter mat or, if our craft plotter allows it, we slide it directly under the plotter rolls. On the other hand, it is worth knowing that cutting the flex film on the mat allows us to reduce possible distortions during cutting.

We lay the film with the stiff backing down, and set the pattern in the plotter program in mirror image. Once the cutting is complete, we use a hook to remove the unnecessary parts of the foil, and our design remains on the backing foil.

This allows us to transfer the entire design to the selected fabric at once. The next step is to transfer the design to the selected fabric, to protect the surface between the foil and the Cricut press I lay baking paper.

After pressing the pattern, we remove the protective film and get the finished inscription.

With flex film we can also create several color designs, in which case we use several types of film, and each is cut separately.

We apply them to the fabric in the same way using the Cricut press but pressing each layer separately.

Summary

Working with flex films has many advantages, it works great for creating simple designs and allows you to use them on a wide variety of materials.
On the other hand, it will not work well for complex graphics, if you pal to create multicolored designs be sure to read our next articles about the sublimation method.