Tie–Dye

Ever since I can remember my daughter has said she wanted to make her own tie dyed shirt. I remember making one with my mom when I was 10 and I loved making was proud of my finished project. We came across these kits at Walmart a few days ago and I thought it was perfect. They also had t shirts for under $5 so the whole project cost less than $15. We had extra dye so my daughter’s bff made some tie dyed socks and we still had left over dye. It was pretty quick.

We put down some thick plastic so that the table wouldn’t get messed up. I cut holes in a garbage bag for a head and arms to protect clothing. The kit came with plastic gloves, but I had some rubber gloves so that is what we used.

The kit also included plenty of sturdy rubber bands. There were instructions in the box with examples of different ways to tie the fabric for different types of patterns. She liked the spiral design so we tied (with rubber bands) the shirt as instructed.The dye is powdered and you add water to the pre-measured containers that come with the dye already in them, so it was not messy.

This got a little messy but with lots of paper towels it wasn’t so bad to control. You have to really soak the cloth with the dye, I was squirting it down into the fabric. When you pre-wash the fabric you choose to dye, make sure you don’t use fabric softener or dryer sheets. I used a dryer sheet because I didn’t read the instructions first!!!

We were a little excited so we didn’t leave it over night, just a few hours so it’s not as dark as it could have been but it’s still nice.