Remove the ruler, being careful not to shift the design. Your T-shirt and decal are now perfectly aligned!

When the cut is finished, don't remove the mat! First, gently lift up a corner to make sure the ruler's shape is completely cut out. If not, press the "Go" button to repeat the cut process. It should go all the way through now.Place your T-shirt ruler up against the collar seam of your T-shirt. You don’t want it on the edge of your collar, but rather just below the seam. If you make a project using a T-shirt ruler guide, I’d love to see it! Please share your projects in my Cricut Crafters & Makers group where you’ll find hundreds of thousands of crafters like you, sharing their tips, projects, and inspiration. You should be able to cover this entire decal in one press with the EasyPress 2. If you are using a home iron or alternate heat source, you may need to press in sections to get the entire decal. You just want to make sure all parts of the decal have been pressed for 30 seconds. The chopping mats are 11" x 14" but I’m going to place them on 12" x 12" mats with the excess hanging off the edge. So on the Prepare screen, leave the Material Size at 12" x 12", but make sure the ruler shape doesn’t go past the 11" mark to the right, since there won’t be material to cut over there.

Preheat your EasyPress or iron to the proper temperature.The guide calls for me to set my EasyPress 2 to 330°F. If you are using an iron and cotton t-shirt, set it to the cotton setting. If your shirt is something other than cotton, you may need a different setting for your material. But if you might need to see the fabric’s surface during alignment — like if you’re using a patterned shirt— or plan to make A LOT of shirts, the chopping mat version is easier to make than you might think and extremely durable. It actually just takes a fine-point blade and StrongGrip mat! It's a bit hard to tell, but there is a smooth side and a rough side to the mats. Since I want the "engraved" texture to be on the underside of my ruler, I'll feel for the smooth side and place the smooth side down on my purple StrongGrip Machine Mat and use a brayer to make sure it's fully adhered. The excess will hang off the end but that won't hurt anything. Place your T-shirt ruler on your vertically creased T-shirt. You don’t want it on the edge of the collar of the t-shirt, but on the seam. Then, place the top of the similarly creased design right at the bottom of the ruler (though sometimes it goes higher or lower, I’ll show you in the video!). This is extra helpful if your design doesn’t have a uniform top edge. You’ll get consistent alignment on multiple shirts using my t-shirt ruler guide collection!An appropriate heat press – I used my EasyPress 2, but you can use another Cricut heat press, or a home iron. Have a towel or pressing mat and a lint roller ready, too. We don't need to change any operations, because I'm going to use the fine-point blade to "engrave" the markings and cut the ruler shape at the same time, but only want the markings to be surface deep. I found it easier to double up on the ruler outline cut rather than fiddling with pressure settings, multiple cuts, and cuts turning out misaligned. Find the vertical center of your shirt. The simplest way to do this is to fold your shirt in half by matching up your sleeves.