Do iron-on t-shirt designs work on knitted fabric?

Q: I’m doing a project where i have to plan a charity event to raise money for a genetic condition. the condition i chose was Raynaud’s, which is a disorder that causes the effected to have extremely cold fingers. i chose this one cuz me and my mum both have it. anyway, for my event i wanted to sell gloves, like the cheap knitted-material ones you can buy at craftstores, that said “Remedy Raynaud’s, the cold fingers disorder” on them. but i didnt know how to put the words on the gloves, and when i researched companies that made customized gloves like this they only sold them in quantities of 300-400, and it was really expensive. does anybody have any ideas on how to put the wording on cheaply so i could sell them for a fundraiser?

A: You could use a stencil and fabric paint–that’s probably the least expensive method. To answer your question, though, iron-on transfers do work on cotton or cotton-blend jersey, which is the knitted fabric from which most T-shirts are made. Embroidery is also a possibility. If you have access to an embroider machine, give that a try. Or get in touch with whatever company in your town has commercial embroidery machines for putting logos on team shirts, hats, and such. You might be able to talk them into doing a dozen or so at a reasonable price. If you’re doing this plan for a project and are not really going to put it into action, why not plan around the price per pair of the 300-400 minimum requirement from the company you found, if the price per pair is reasonable?

The main problems with using t-shirt transfer paper to put images on things like this is that the material you’re choosing is a knit, and may be acrylic/polyester/etc.

Materials like acrylic/polyester can kind of melt or flatten when too much heat and/or pressure is used on them (unlike cotton and natural materials).
And knits are not solid surfaces like most woven materials are, so there will be little holes all in the image/lettering, which will only get larger when the knit is stretched to go onto a hand.

You could stabilize the knit from underneath just in the area you want to do the lettering so it can’t stretch right there (using some kind of interfacing) but could get quite fiddly.
Or you could do the lettering on something woven, then glue or sew(?) those onto the gloves.

Or you could figure out something else that you could attach to the gloves which has your wording or even a symbol of some kind (with certain kinds of glues or large “stitches,” etc.).