Rethinking my business approach. Better to make items to order or keep Inventory?

I have been running a custom t-shirt business for almost 5 years now and we currently custom print every shirt to order to keep our overhead down. I have a vendor that can supply me with the blank tees the very next business day allowing me to print on demand. In doing so however we run into other problems I wouldn't have If I just outsourced the printing in bulk (no one offs as it's too expensive) and did everything myself. Right now we have periodic quality issues with the printing that wouldn't happen if these were large print runs instead of 1 offs, issues with employees when we have to hire seasonal help for the busier times, overhead of having a shop, machinery, payroll, etc. I know they say your employees will never work and care as much as you do but It's tough to accept as I want to give my customers the absolute best. I was totally against carrying Inventory in the past but the more I think about it now the more I am thinking this wouldn't be so bad but I am scared to pull the trigger. I have close to 250 t-shirt designs now and I can assuredly pick at least 100 of my better sellers and just have these printed in the most popular sizes i sell and inventory that. If i did that I can get rid of my current overhead and I can actually house the inventory in my house and just package and ship from home. However, most shirt designs i have are very pop culture driven and only sell when the iron is hot so to speak. When I am printing these in house I can easily just post a new design I am not sure on and print if I sell, if I am outsourcing i maybe stuck holding a good amount of dead stock.

Any thoughts feedback on this is much appreciated. I really don't want to do a half and half type deal so please suggest one or the other if you could. Thank you all in advance.