The Cricut Hat Press turns your thinking cap ideas into reality

Sunday, 06 August 2023 22:27

The Cricut Hat Press turns your thinking cap ideas into reality

The Cricut (pronounced "cricket”) ecosystem offers great versatility to help you bring your creative ideas to life - but what if you want to work with a curved surface like a cap? Here’s where the Cricut Hat Press comes in.

iTWire has featured Cricut products in the past; there is the Cricut Maker 3 cutting machine itself, the Cricut EasyPress 3 heat press, and a wide range of innovative materials like these and these.

In short, if you can conceive it, Cricut will help you make it, no matter if you’re thinking about T-shirt designs, car decals, tote bags, wall hangings, greeting cards, leather earrings, paper banners, stickers, party decorations, and so much more.

While the Cricut Maker 3 itself handles a huge range of materials like wood, leather, paper, vinyl, and more, the Cricut Easy Press 3 is ultimately confined to things that are, well, flat. A T-shirt is not so different to a tote bag, but when it comes to fusing your creations onto a curved surface you need a different tool. Here’s where the Cricut Hat Press comes in, which as you might guess, enables you to produce hats and caps with the same ease as you operate with shirts and bags.

The Cricut Hat Press features a curved heat plate to imprint your amazing creations. It combines this with a versatile hat pressing form for a seamless hat-making experience, allowing you to go from Cricut Maker to Hat Press without any fuss. The pressing form fits a variety of adult-sized hats, like sun hats and ball caps, to provide a firm surface for curved materials. Possibly you can use it too for other curved surfaces, whatever they might be.

As always, the best way to explain is to give a demonstration. Previously, Mrs iTWire, an early childhood educator, has used Cricut equipment and materials to create koala-themed T-shirts for her class among other things.

This time around, the director is expecting her second child, a little brother or sister to the almost two-year-old David (not this David, obviously) and loved the idea of special attire for the young fellow as part of their announcement and excitement.

So, out comes the faithful Cricut Maker 3 and Cricut Design Space app. A bit of design here, a bit of editing there, and we’re ready to cut onto Cricut smart iron-on material. You can buy a roll of 13x36” black material at OfficeWorks for $24.95 here. A whole bunch of coloured materials are also available.

You can see the items being created here, a nifty T-shirt and ‘D’ cap. In this image, the iron-on material has been cut and is resting on top of the shirt and cap, ready for pressing.

We use the Cricut EasyPress 3 as usual for the shirt, but it’s now time to turn to the curved Cricut Hat Press for the cap. The Hat Press comes with a soft curved stand you can rest the hat on - a faux head, you might say, albeit without a face. And, of course, it comes with a curved heat press.

So, place the material on the cap, then hold the Hat Press onto it. The Hat Press has three heat levels, and buttons to set the temperature and to start the process. You can set more advanced options via the free Cricut Heat app which uses Bluetooth to control the Hat Press. With the app, you can set custom times and heat and also run through a practice project tutorial to help get you familiar with the unit.

All in all, it's an almost effortless process where your creativity is the limit. If you can conceive it, Cricut will help you make it as easy as design, cut, and press - no matter if your target surface is flat or curved. Or, in other words, set, press, success!

You can buy the Cricut Hat Press at the same places you can buy other Cricut hardware, such as Harvey Norman, Officeworks, JB Hi-Fi, and elsewhere.

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