Struggle to know where to put HTV Placement on a shirt? 2 Freebies!

picture of a gray v neck t-shirt with the word 'Merica and a red, white, blue flag in the shape of a heart.

Ever wonder exactly about HTV Placement on shirts? I have definitely felt confused a time or two or twenty! There are several important factors involved when you create that awesome T-shirt for wearing, gifting or selling. I am here to help guide you through those factors!

Plus if you like the design I made, you can have that too for free in my resource library in multiple formats. I also put a Free handy guide for HTV Placement on shirts from a cute little infant outfit up to a 4XL in my resource library for you. Feel free to save it or print it for easy stress-free reference.

3 Important HTV Placement Factors

Table of Contents

Shirt Size
Design Size
Design Placement on shirt

So let’s take shirt size & design size as an example. You would not use the same design size on sweet little newborn Isabella as you would on burly linebacker Lawrence.

In addition, you would not put a cute little 3″ bumblebee design in the middle of Linebacker Lawrence’s 4XL T-shirt. But it sure would be cute on sweet little Isabella’s tiny t-shirt.

Good Point!

Methods of Measuring

How do you measure, oh let me count the ways! Many moons ago I worked at a import store in a mall. In the store we also had a T-Shirt shop. I can’t even begin to imagine how many shirts I created and sold and measured for!

Back then we had guides that were clear but hard plastic. We also had what I would call now heavy weight card stock size templates with cut outs for lining up letters. This was old school, where people picked what they wanted their shirts to say and we picked out the letters and ironed them on with a heat press.

They could pick letters and a picture or both. My point though really is we created all kinds of measuring devices dependent on what the customer wanted and our personal preferences.

My 3 Favorite Measuring Devices for HTV Placement

My hand
My fingers
This gadget

When I made the T-Shirt for this blog post, I literally used my two fingers put together as they measure exactly 1.5 ” at my knuckles. Lucky Me! Who knew we are born with rulers 🤣😆🤣 Since this shirt has a V neck it’s best to place the top of the design approx 1.5 ” below the neckline. The same rule applies if you have a scooped-neck t-shirt.

Sizing and Placement Guide

Get your free HTV Placement Guide here.

It’s very helpful to look at a guide on where it’s best to place your design on any given size shirt. It sets you up for success and takes the guesswork out of it. As always a guide also gives you a starting point of reference in which you can adjust if needed as well.

There is definitely a lot of room for personalization when designing t-shirts. So have fun and if you need some inspiration for design size or ideas check out my favorite T-shirt Design Template Ideas site. I have personally ordered my business design t-shirts from them and I am a very happy customer. 😊

I get lots of compliments when I wear my shirts, especially craft and fabric stores!

Free SVG Designs

For this project, I designed the FREE Flag/Heart, Merica, and America in 2 fonts & Stars/Stripes. I created them in any format you may need. You can get those here.