Custom Deer Hunting Beanie with Iron On EasyWeed HTV

The closest I’ve ever been to hunting is watching the classic Looney Tunes episode, “Rabbit Fire.” Wherein Bugs and Daffy aim to convince Elmer Fudd that their counterpart is in season. Eventually they turn the tables altogether and declare it “Elmer Season.”

While I’m content to giggle and guffaw my way through the cartoon antics, watching TV really is much better with a snack, and I could go for some venison jerky. I may not be involved in the hunting process, but I love the result!

In order to keep my jerky coming, there has to be hunters on the prowl. While the hunters are out and about it’s extremely important for their safety that they’re noticeable to others hunting in the area. The designated safety color for hunters is known as hunter, blaze, or safety orange. Each state has their own rules regarding how much blaze orange an individual must wear. Commonly, the color must be worn above the waist making a hat or beanie a good option.

Adding a custom image or logo to a hunting hat is no problem with EasyWeed heat transfer vinyl. I’ve previously heat pressed Siser HTV to an acrylic beanie in this blog post. However, for this project I’m using a home iron.

Start by creating your image or logo. I used clip art deer antlers and rifles to create my logo. Depending on what kind of hunter you are you could change the antlers to turkey feathers (I can almost smell that Thanksgiving turkey!) or the rifles to arrows for a fully customized hunting hat.

After sizing the logo to fit the brim of my beanie, it was cut out with the Cricut Explore Air. I cut the black and brown EasyWeed with the “Iron-On” setting on the Cricut Smart Dial. In this instance the Iron-On setting was my best option, but because of the varying thicknesses of HTV that won’t always be the case. Check out this post to find your best cut setting on the Cricut Explore Air for the type of HTV you’re working with.

When the cutter finished I weeded away the extra vinyl that didn’t belong in my hunting logo so I’m left with two HTV transfers. To apply them to the hunting hat, I first set my iron to the “Cotton” setting and let it heat up. I’m applying to a 100% acrylic beanie which can discolor under heat. If you’re concerned about discoloration then I would recommend test ironing a small piece of HTV to the inside of the hat to see how the material reacts. If you see discoloration occur in your test press, hold on, all is not lost yet! Give the fabric a chance to cool and re-asses the area. If your beanie is like mine, the discoloration will have faded as the heat dissipated leaving no permanent mark.

Now that the iron is nice and hot, I set my first transfer on to the hat to be applied. Cover the entire pressing area with a heat transfer cover sheet before firmly pressing the iron on top of the hat. Without sliding my iron, I pressed the brown EasyWeed for 10 seconds.

Layer 1- Brown EasyWeed™

The best surface to use when applying HTV with an iron is a hard, flat table.

When the HTV was stuck to the beanie and the carrier was still hot I peeled the clear sheet off. Then I added my second transfer down and repeated the heat application steps from before.

EasyWeed™ is a hot peel.

Layer 2 – Black EasyWeed

It only takes a couple of minutes to create a custom hunting hat that will help keep you safe!

Blaze orange isn’t exactly my color, but I am grateful for it as it continually increases the safety of hunters. Now if the venison jerky would only stop increasing my waist line!

Have a question about this post? Drop a comment and I’ll be sure to get back to you!