Making a city map t-shirt with the Vinyl T-Shirt Map preset

Difficulty: Beginner–Intermediate (weeding takes patience) · Time: 45–90 minutes · Methods, ranked: 1) HTV + heat press (the intended build), 2) adhesive vinyl decal (laptop, car window, water bottle), 3) sublimation or DTF print from the high-res PNG if you'd rather skip weeding entirely.

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 cut out as holes - 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.

Open the Vinyl T-Shirt Map preset

What You'll 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. 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 with invertAsHoles enabled, so rivers and lakes become holes punched out of the design rather than printed shapes. Leave the fill color alone - once inverted it doesn't print, it just defines the cutouts. If your city has lots of tiny ponds, you'll get lots of tiny holes; turn on small-polygon cleanup at export to drop them.

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. Keep the water-inversion toggle on so the holes are baked in.
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.

Choose Your Build Method

HTV with a vinyl cutter and heat press

Import the SVG into your cutter software (Design Space, Silhouette Studio) and size it: 220–260 mm wide suits an adult medium chest.
Mirror the design horizontally - HTV cuts from the back. This is the step everyone forgets once.
Cut with HTV shiny-side (carrier) down; do a small test cut first - kiss-cut through the vinyl, not the carrier.
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.
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).
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

Cut the same SVG not mirrored on permanent vinyl.
Weed as above, then lay transfer tape over the design and burnish well - the frame holds everything in register.
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 Vinyl T-Shirt Map preset

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