Saturday, July 27, 2013

Tie Dye Shirts

One of the things on my summer bucket list was to tie dye shirts with the kids again.  The last time we did it, we did onesies for William!  I had gotten some cotton "crochet thread" that I wanted to dye, also.



This time Walmart had a cheaper dye kit.
(I think we should have used the Tulip brand at least for the blue)

Getting the shirts wet


Waiting is so hard


Dye is all ready

I helped Andy with the first color so he knew how to do it




Dan tried a technique of sandwiching the shirt between 2 boards







Will doesn't know that sometimes "less is more" ☺

We had some extra dye and 2 extra small shirts, so Emi and Andy got an extra



I was doing laundry, so I put the shirts on top of the dryer to "cook" a little

I wound off 50 yard hanks of the thread

Emi helping dye the thread

The hanks of thread all dyed

We still had extra dye, so I soaked the whole rest of the balls of thread and we dyed them, too!


Sitting for 8 hours

My threads

Ready to rinse

Rinse until it runs clear


So pretty!

All rinsed 

I had a sample "color catcher" so I put it in when I washed the shirts.
Look at all the color it "caught"!!
 The blue dye washed almost completely out!!  It was rather disappointing.  Look at the 2 pictures above with them on the edge of the tub to see how nice the blue was before washing!

Dan's shirts

My shirts

Sarah's shirts (Both of hers had blue)

Emily's shirts

Will's shirts

Andy's shirts

The rags we used to wipe up spills, etc.

My hanks of thread drying

Skeins of thread drying



3 comments:

Ed & Dottie said...

Most of it is very colorful. Too bad about the blue washing out.

Jane McLellan said...

You had fun! A shame that the blue was so disappointing. You ended up with a riot of colour anyway.

rainbows and raindrops said...

the blue was unfortunate but everything looks great anyway! They'd make really cute family outfits!

Plus I'm sure you guys have a whole load of family fun!

I can't wait to see how your thread tats out!