Tie Dye

Every Spring, we get some white tee shirts and do some tie dying. Michael is still in school and tie dye is a popular choice for spirit days.  I usually do the scrunching up and add the rubber bands.  We use a kit that comes with squeeze bottles.  We both wear grubby clothes and plastic gloves, and we do the activity outside so there’s very little clean-up involved.

I usually give Mikey two or three of the colors for each tee shirt so that they come out looking great!  He uses the whole bottle of dye and we let the shirts sit in ziplock bags overnight before we wash them so the colors come out bright! This is especially important if your son or daughter is not too into pastel colors…use a lot of dye and let it sit before washing.

Then, I rinse the shirts in the laundry room sink, removing most of the dye.  The tee shirts get washed in a load of their own for the first wash and then they go through the dryer to set the dye.  Even after this first wash and dry, I keep them in loads with similar colors because some more dye will come out on the next few washes.

Overall, this is an easy, fun activity that we have enjoyed for years! Once Mikey outgrows the tee shirts, I wear them to workout in our basement…we get a lot of good use out of this craft project each year. Highly recommend!