# Making a city map t-shirt with the Vinyl T-Shirt Map preset > a one-piece weed-able hexagon street badge for HTV and heat pressing Wear your hometown. This preset turns any city's street grid into a single connected hexagon badge - the major roads of the city rendered as a bold weed-able network with the water as a filled blue shape - sized for the chest of a t-shirt, hoodie, or tote bag. It's a great gift for someone who just moved away from (or back to) a city they love, and a solid first heat-transfer-vinyl project because the preset is deliberately kept to one cuttable piece. ## What you need ### HTV / heat press (recommended) - Heat transfer vinyl, one color (matte black HTV looks fantastic with this preset's all-black design) - A blank t-shirt, hoodie, or canvas tote - cotton or cotton/poly blend - Vinyl cutter (Cricut, Silhouette, Brother ScanNCut) or a laser with vinyl-safe settings - **never laser-cut PVC vinyl; use only PVC-free HTV if cutting on a laser** - Heat press (or a household iron in a pinch), Teflon sheet or parchment - Weeding tools: hook, tweezers, good light ### Adhesive vinyl decal - Permanent adhesive vinyl (Oracal 651 or similar), transfer tape, squeegee ### Sublimation / DTF print - Sublimation printer + sublimation paper + polyester shirt, or a DTF printing service and the exported PNG ## Step 1 - Start from the preset Open [the Vinyl T-Shirt Map preset](/map-designer?preset=vinyl-t-shirt-map). It loads centered on Lethbridge, Canada at zoom 12 - search for your own city instead. The hexagon export shape is already set, with a black border frame (10 padding) that everything connects to. Framing tips for a wearable design: - Zoom 11–12.5 works best: you want the *major* road skeleton, not every cul-de-sac. The more roads in frame, the more weeding you'll do. - Drag the map so a recognizable feature - a river bend, the downtown grid, a coastline - sits near the middle of the hexagon. That's what makes people say "hey, that's *my* city." - A river or lake helps a lot here: the Water layer punches it out as negative space, which reads beautifully on fabric. ## Step 2 - Tune the layers The preset has two layer groups: **Roads** - this is a **Cut-mode** layer (`outline: true`): every road is buffered into a contour and merged with the hexagon border frame so the whole design exports as *one connected piece*. That's exactly what you want for vinyl - nothing falls off the carrier sheet, and the transfer goes on in one pass. It includes five road classes with stepped widths: - Motorways (width 5) and motorway links (4) - Primary roads (4) - Secondary roads (3) - Tertiary roads (2) **Width matters more than usual here.** Stroke widths are relative to the design, so the physical line width depends on your final press size. At a typical 250 mm chest print, the width-2 tertiary roads come out well under 1 mm wide - borderline to weed and prone to lifting in the wash. Two easy fixes: bump tertiary up to 3–4, or remove the tertiary feature entirely for a cleaner, bolder badge. When in doubt, fewer + thicker roads always weeds and washes better. **Water** - a Solid layer: rivers and lakes are filled blue shapes (a second vinyl color you layer behind the roads, or just leave off for a one-color decal). It's deliberately not inverted as holes here - on a t-shirt the garment behind the design isn't a colored backplate, so a positive water shape reads better than a cutout. If your city has lots of tiny ponds, turn on small-polygon cleanup at export to drop the slivers. ## Step 3 - Export Open the export modal: - **HTV / adhesive vinyl:** download the **combined SVG** (or the Roads layer SVG) - it's one merged outline your cutter software ingests directly. For a one-color decal, cut just the Roads layer; for two-color, cut the blue Water shape from a second sheet and layer it behind. - **Sublimation / DTF:** use the **high-res PNG (4096 px)** and turn the **Background toggle off** for a transparent PNG - essential so only the map prints, not a white hexagon block. - Turn on **small-polygon cleanup** to remove slivers too small to weed. - Skip the mounting-hole options - they're for rigid materials, not fabric. ## Vinyl Cutting ### HTV with a vinyl cutter and heat press 1. Import the SVG into your cutter software (Design Space, Silhouette Studio) and size it: 220–260 mm wide suits an adult medium chest. 2. **Mirror the design horizontally** - HTV cuts from the back. This is the step everyone forgets once. 3. Cut with HTV shiny-side (carrier) down; do a small test cut first - kiss-cut through the vinyl, not the carrier. 4. Weed: remove everything *except* the roads and frame. Start from the outside, work inward, and pull slowly so thin roads stay anchored. Good raking light makes the cut lines pop. 5. Pre-press the shirt 5 seconds to drive out moisture, position the design (center it ~7–8 cm below the collar), and press per your vinyl's spec (typically ~150 °C / 305 °F, 10–15 s, medium pressure). 6. Peel the carrier (hot or cold per the vinyl), cover with parchment, and give it a 5-second second press to lock the fine roads down. Care note: wash inside-out, cold, no dryer heat - fine tertiary roads are the first thing to lift if you cook them. ### Adhesive vinyl decal 1. Cut the same SVG **not mirrored** on permanent vinyl. 2. Weed as above, then lay transfer tape over the design and burnish well - the frame holds everything in register. 3. Apply to a clean laptop lid, water bottle, or rear car window; squeegee, then peel the tape at a sharp angle. ## Make it yours - Swap the hexagon for a circle or heart export shape - the Cut-mode frame adapts automatically. - Two-city shirt: press two smaller hexagons side by side ("where we met / where we live"). - Drop tertiary roads and bump motorway width to 6–7 for a chunky, minimalist badge that weeds in five minutes. - Metallic or glitter HTV turns the street grid into a statement piece; flock HTV gives a vintage athletic feel. - Add your neighborhood instead of the whole city - zoom to 14 and let one district's grid fill the hexagon. - Use the same export on a canvas tote or a denim jacket back panel (size up to 300 mm - and bump all the widths to match). - Pair with a text layer of the city's coordinates pressed in a second color beneath the hexagon. --- Open the tool: https://www.mylasertools.com/learn/guides/vinyl-t-shirt-map Read online: https://www.mylasertools.com/learn/guides/vinyl-t-shirt-map