It feels like you aren’t quarantining unless you’re in tie dye so I’ve been on the hunt for some tie dye pieces for awhile. A lot of what I was finding was either cropped or pretty pricey so I decided to DIY it. I also thought the girls would enjoy a project. Overall it was pretty easy and turned out really well! Here’s the materials I used (found all at Target!) and some of the things I learned!
Materials:
- Items you want to tie dye – I kept it simple (and inexpensive) with Hanes t-shirts for the girls and a mens Hanes sweatshirt for myself
- Tie dye – I used Rit Dye and it worked really well. I selected two colors I thought would go well together, purple and gray, and also bought the Rit Dye ColorStay Fixative to put on after the color. This isn’t a required step but really helps get out a lot of the excess color after you finish tie dyeing.
- Rubberbands
- Empty bucket or container
- Smock/gloves for kids
Steps:
First prep the items you want to tie dye by selecting the design you want them to have. I chose a couple of different ones, but my favorite was the sunburst. Click here to find a youtube video on how to achieve this pattern. Once you have prepped the items you’ll need to decide on your technique. The Rit Dye website had great step by step instructions and we chose the immersion method. I didn’t have any squirt bottles for the squirt bottle method and I really think immersion is easier with kids anyways, as your dipping the fabric into the container rather than squirting it on. We dipped our pieces in the gray color first and left it in for the least amount of time suggested and then moved to purple as we wanted purple to be the dominant color. Once we finished with both colors we followed the steps on their site for the ColorStay Fixative. After washing and drying all of the items turned out great!
The best thing about tie dyeing with kids is there’s room for error. There’s nothing precise about it so they can be fully involved and everything still turns out well! 🙂 Happy tie dyeing!
For more DIY projects check out my instagram at @ourdaysinthechi