Anyone know anything about printing onto fabric??

[alfielooloo]

Our school want to print a design the children have drawn onto the Dinner Ladies tabards. We have a competion going for the best design. Only problem is, no - one thought beforehand how do we get the design onto the fabric All the printers we have been in touch with are quoting ridiculous amounts. There are only 6 tabards to do so obviously it's not going to be cheap.
Do any of you arty ladies out there know of a way to transfer the design onto something to be ironed or sewn on ?? surely it can't be that difficult, can it??

TIA

[CombustibleLemon]

You can scan the designs or take digital photos and transfer them to a computer. Then print them out using iron-on transfer paper like this

[alfielooloo]

Thank you CombustibleLemon! That looks great. I'm sure it will give the same results as if done by a Printer.
I have just spent all morning phoning round trying to organise this, can now get on with my mountain of housework

[UniS]

any one had a good experience doing this onto polyester sports shirts?
I've done Ok on to cotton Ts before now, but have bought a teams worth of proper sports shirts for this summer.

Iron on papar alert- if the tabards are a dark colour- use transfer paper designed for dark fabrics. the regular iron on transfer paper irons on see through apart from where printed, the stuff for dark fabrics is white and remains white when ironed so your design has a white backing.

[Treetop1]

There's a great company called Paint Me I've come accross. They do a variety of printing things one of which is they can take your pciture and print it onto a polyester sports shirt using a special printer. they can do one offs. Quite pricey but that's a given if you do things in small numbers. their website is www.paintme.info. Look in the Paint Me Art section. It's aimed at parents getting their kids pictures printe donto T-shirts but they will do any pictures and can get sports shirts apparently.

[gillybean2]

I looked at that website treetop1. It seems you have to use their special paint and the t-shirts although cotton have a special coating to help fix the paint. So don't think it would work in the situation the OP requires.