Jespana,
I am a fairly newby myself, You can heat press 50/50 cotton poly or 100% cotton.
If you are printing with your own paper, the hand on the shirts will be felt untill washed.
Image clip is the softest but leaves a lil balley feel untill washed.
what you are feeling is the by product left on the shirt with the ink, that is in the fiber of the shirt.
get lots of samples of papers find out which feels the best,, to you, we all have our own specs.
Even the best paper has a hand, and if you check out screen printing or plastisols, you still feel a little, go to your closet right now. feel your best tees and hoodies.
They all have hand. but different,
decide what you like and go for it.
For printing your own transfers, you will have to cut, around unlesss using a printer/cutter, or image clip.
And these process's are on light tees.
Dark tees you have to job out, the graphic, to someone who will cutter /vinyl cut for you or screen print on plastisol, or screen print.
There are some dark papers to use for transfers but have not found one that does not have to be cut , I would use the dark papers for a pocket grahic but that is about it.
The underbase of the ones for dark shirts are a thick layer of white, so your printer ink goes on top of that and shows awesome color,
You are gonna have to play with all these, and the manufacters are very willing to send samples, for you to test, \I hope this helped.
Sandy Jo
Help me understand 
