You don’t need a laser cutter to make a map - your Cricut (or Silhouette or Brother ScanNCut) cuts the same SVGs out of vinyl, so a city’s street grid becomes a t-shirt badge, a tumbler wrap, a laptop decal, or a painted-wall stencil. The whole trick is exporting a design that stays in one connected piece so nothing tiny falls off the mat and weeding stays sane.

The free Vinyl T-Shirt Map preset on MyLaserTools is purpose-built for this: it buffers every road into a contour and merges them with a border frame so the design exports as a single cuttable piece. (New to the platform? See our MyLaserTools Cricut SVG guide for the full tool lineup.)

What You’ll Need

For Fabric (HTV) For Hard Surfaces
Heat transfer vinyl (matte black looks great) Permanent adhesive vinyl (Oracal 651)
Blank shirt, hoodie, or tote Transfer tape + squeegee
Cricut + heat press or iron Tumbler, laptop, water bottle, or car window
Weeding tools + good light Stencil vinyl for paint masks

Step 1: Frame a Weed-Friendly City

Open the Vinyl T-Shirt Map preset and search your city.

  • Zoom 11-12.5 works best: you want the major road skeleton, not every cul-de-sac. More roads = more weeding.
  • Drag the map so a recognizable feature - a river bend, downtown, a coastline - sits near the middle.
  • A river or lake helps: the water layer punches it out as negative space, which reads beautifully on fabric.

Step 2: Keep the Lines Thick Enough to Weed

The Roads layer is a connected cut piece - exactly what a Cricut wants. But width matters: stroke widths are relative, so at a 250 mm chest print the thinnest road tier comes out under 1 mm wide, which is borderline to weed and prone to lifting in the wash.

Two easy fixes: bump the smallest tier up to 3-4, or remove it entirely for a cleaner, bolder badge. Fewer, thicker roads always weed and wash better.

Step 3: Export for the Cutter

  • Download the combined SVG (or the Roads layer SVG) - one merged outline Design Space ingests directly.
  • For a one-colour decal, cut just the Roads layer; for two-colour, cut the Water shape from a second sheet and layer it behind.
  • Turn on small-polygon cleanup to remove slivers too small to weed.

Step 4: Cut and Apply

HTV on a shirt:

  1. Import the SVG into Design Space 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 exactly once.
  3. Load HTV shiny-side down; do a test cut first (kiss-cut through the vinyl, not the carrier).
  4. Weed everything except the roads and frame. Work outside-in and pull slowly so thin roads stay anchored.
  5. Pre-press the shirt, position the design, and press per your vinyl’s spec (~150 C / 305 F, 10-15 s).
  6. Peel the carrier, cover with parchment, and give it a 5-second second press.

Adhesive vinyl on a tumbler or laptop: Cut the same SVG not mirrored, weed, apply transfer tape, and burnish onto a clean surface.

Care note: wash HTV shirts inside-out, cold, no dryer heat - the finest roads lift first if you cook them.

Make It Yours

  • Swap the hexagon for a circle or heart export shape - the frame adapts automatically.
  • Two-city design: “where we met / where we live” side by side.
  • Metallic, glitter, or flock HTV turns the street grid into a statement piece.
  • Zoom to 14 and let one neighbourhood’s grid fill the shape.

For the tool’s own walkthrough, see the MyLaserTools Cricut map guide.

Free for commercial use - hometown map shirts and tumblers are reliable craft-fair sellers.