Try and find yourself an nice old Roland Camm 1, ideally something small like a CX24, ideal for small graphics and T-Shirt material if you want to go down that route
Get your head round using vector files, look out for Vector .pdf files, very useful
You can get plug-ins for Corel Draw, for little money, like Finecut, this will allow you to cut directly from Corel draw, look for an old Windows machine to run everything on and a “one off purchase” of Corel X4
All the above will keep costs down and give you great results