This past weekend my baby sister was home for a visit after her first couple of weeks of being away at school. To celebrate her grown-up status, we hosted a bonfire for the family so that we could all eat yummy snacks - mostly s'mores - and get all caught up on the goings-on. I decided it would be fun to do a big group project to end the summer on a high note, and nothing says high note of summer like tie dye.
If you are "on Pinterest" you can't help but see pins of the Sharpie Tie-Dye method, which made me curious, so I decided to give that a try. It seemed kid friendly and quick enough to manage on a summer evening before the sun went down. My sister-in-law and my sister and my mom were willing to go along for the ride as well. If you want to know how to do it, just check Pinterest. You will find lots of ideas and methods and you can choose what works best for you.
I tried one t-shirt with cardboard between the layers and a single big design.
All the other t-shirts were done using the "stretch the fabric over a cup and hold it tight with a rubber band" method.
After the dots and lines were drawn, we dripped the rubbing alcohol onto the fabric. It was kinda cool to watch the ink run. Different colors reacted in different ways, so if you are persnickety about your colors touching you might want to practice on a scrap of fabric first
We let the shirts air dry for a while, and then I tossed them into the dryer to finish setting the dye (that was a Pinterest tip, it seemed like a good idea to me). I didn't get any pictures of the finished t-shirts because it was dark before they came out of the dryer, and then the next day my kids wore the shirts and got them filthy before I could find my camera. Sigh. Someday my kids will stop sabotaging my blogging efforts.
Using Sharpies is definitely faster and easier then the old-fashioned method of rubber bands and fabric dye. You should try it sometime!
Happy Tie-Dye, Everyone!
P.S. We will be leaving on our annual trip in three days, so I will be taking a blogging vacation for a while. Check back in two weeks for a report on our traveling projects! (Or disasters - you'll have to wait and see.)
3 comments:
Very neat project!!
We made more on Saturday with M&M. :)
This was a fun project...so much brighter than the one where you color a picture on sandpaper and then iron it on your shirt.
We've never done tie dye, I've been wanting to try it for a while. Sharpies makes it look like a more managable project - thank for sharing! Lucinda
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