What does one shirt actually cost you off the roll?
How many designs fit across your roll, how much length each one eats with waste on top, what that costs at your roll price — then the blank, the extras, and a markup that is yours. Everything stays in your browser.
Your roll
The design
The piece
The order
The numbers here are yours to check. This page does arithmetic on what you type — it cannot see your recipe, your equipment or your batch.
Want it to remember?
In MadeKeeper the roll is inventory: every piece made consumes its inches, the blank comes off the shelf count, and the shirt knows its true cost — so the price you quote in the Facebook group stands on something. See for sticker & vinyl makers or poke around the live demo. $19/mo for the whole back office, kept for as long as you stay. The shop stays free for cost a piece and one fair — no product cap. The tax packet, Etsy and Square, and more fairs are the $19.
The vinyl math, priced per piece
'How much should I charge for shirts' fills craft groups every single day, and the honest answer starts with a number most sellers never compute: what one piece takes off the roll. The math below is the same math the calculator runs, in the open.
How much vinyl does one design really use?
More than its own height, and that is the part guessing misses. Designs nest across the roll — two 5" designs fit side by side on a 12" roll — so each piece's share of length is the design height divided by how many fit across, plus waste for weeding scraps, test cuts, and the row that did not quite fit. A 5×6 design on a 12" roll runs about 3.5" of roll per piece at 15% waste, which is how a $15 roll quietly becomes 52 decals — or 29 cents each.
What should I charge for a custom shirt?
Cost first, then markup. The piece's true cost is the blank plus the vinyl it ate plus the extras — carrier mask, sublimation paper, your ink figure. Then a multiplier: 3× cost is the common craft-pricing convention, and it is a starting point, not a law. What the markup is buying is everything the receipt doesn't show: your design time, the weeding, the press cycle, the redo when the first one scorched.
What about my press time and electricity?
Real, and deliberately not in the per-piece materials figure. A heat press draws about as much as an iron, and a press cycle is a minute or two — the electricity is pennies, but your MINUTES are not. Both belong in the price via your markup or an hourly rate, not blended into the materials cost, so your books can tell the difference between what a shirt cost and what your afternoon was worth.
Why is waste a setting?
Because your scrap pile is yours. Fifteen percent covers ordinary weeding and test cuts for most people; intricate designs weed away more, simple text less, and a crowded cut layout can waste half a row. Set the number from your own last roll — count the pieces you actually got and the calculator's roll-yield figure will tell you your real waste next time.