Print a t-shirt cheap enough for one-time use

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By Phillip Torrone
Posted 2006/04/05 @ 7:05 am
Category General

BG writes – “A froogle.com search for cheap supplies last week surprised me… it’s easy to print a single-use t-shirt for my toddler at a surprisingly low cost — less than 5 bucks! Good Hanes white cotton t-shirts in toddler sizes can be had for less than $3 each, and Avery Dark T-shirt Transfers cost $2 apiece (just under $10 for a pack of 5; the dark shirt iron-on transfers work best on all shirts, dark or not). I made this today for my toddler, to amuse a friend who’s coming to visit tomorrow.” – Link.

In the Maker Shed

7 Responses to Print a t-shirt cheap enough for one-time use

stevecooley on April 5th, 2006 at 8:54 am said:

check out Bruce Sterling’s polar bear bumper sticker

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tomhinds on April 5th, 2006 at 10:08 am said:

should the cost of ink be included?

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B.G. on April 5th, 2006 at 11:04 am said:

The cost of ink is dropping, and is pretty low with new ink jet printers. ConsumerReports.org has 8×10 photo printing costs starting at 70 cents a page, but about half of that cost is for the glossy paper. I found white toddler cotton t-shirts for $2.64, transfers were $2.00 apiece, and if ink is 35 cents, that’s $4.99. Whew, just made the “under $5″ claim… unless you count the cost of plugging in the iron!

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wyandots on April 6th, 2006 at 6:02 am said:

I’ve got a cheaper way. Print design backwards. Xerox copy at the darkest possible level that still looks good. You could also use a laser printer the same way.
Now iron onto the shirt. It takes time, and a hot iron, but the results are very good. You can go over details or color in with sharpie pens, or fabric paint. The big advantage of this method is that it last much, much longer than the store-bought iron-on sheets.

The only thing I haven’t done is color copy transfer, but there’s no reason it can’t work. As long as the inks are heat set (as in copiers and laser printers) they can be heat-transferred.

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riccardo_hembop on April 6th, 2006 at 2:08 pm said:

Not exactly environmentally sound saying ‘cheap enough for one time use’. With gadgets & any other resource we should aim to make best of use of it for as long as possible. Bit of thought please PT.

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riccardo_hembop on April 6th, 2006 at 2:11 pm said:

Not exactly environmentally sound saying ‘cheap enough for one time use’. With gadgets & any other resource we should aim to make best of use of it for as long as possible. I’d have thought MAKE would have been all for reuse and making use of existing resources. Any way to print over an existing print? Bit of thought please PT. Keep up the otherwise good work!

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philliptorrone on April 6th, 2006 at 2:12 pm said:

riccardo, maybe the maker is going to use it as a rag as opposed to paper towels next?

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