Tag: tie-dye

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Extreme Makeover, T-shirt Edition

wittychild

I’ve been tie-dyeing since I was knee-high to a grasshopper an idealistic teenager who really wanted to be a hippie. I’ve gotten over the hippie stuff, mostly, but still enjoy the tie-dye. And although I’ve added vinyl transfers to a shirt I’ve already dyed (like my Canada Day shirts from a few years back), it didn’t occur to me to try dyeing a shirt that already had a graphic on it, until I saw someone do it on Lettuce Craft.

Back in the spring, I found this lonely guy in the clearance section:

I’m not a fan of white, and would normally never have looked twice, 40% savings be darned. But ah, as a blank canvas…that’s a different story.

After dampening the shirt and wringing it out (this is after prewashing, of course), I decided to go for a classic spiral pattern. My hands were covered in gloves which were in turn covered in dye, so I didn’t get an in-progress picture. If you’ve never tried this and want to see how, Tulip offers a really cool step-by-step.

After waiting the requisite 24 hours or so, the shirt was rinsed until the water ran clear, and it looked like this:

It still had to be run through the washing machine, though. It’s a little crazy how much dye there still is to be removed! Here’s the final product:

It might not be as brilliantly bright as it was post-rinse, but the colours are still vibrant and transform it into something summery and fun.

Thanks for looking! 🙂

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We stand on guard for thee…and look darned cute doing it, too!

wittychild

Last summer, Michaels* had included, in one of their daily promotional emails, a link to a tutorial to make a tie-dyed Canada Day t-shirt. My tie-dye buddy and I (he’s also my baking buddy; truly, he’s a jack of all trades) bought white t-shirts and a bottle of red dye, and…never got around to applying one to the other. Whoops.

Fast-forward to this year: back in May, I was putting a file at work in abeyance for two months, which took me to July 1. Hey – we had time to get them done this year! We found last year’s stash still in its plastic bag from the store, and I set to finding the tutorial from last year. It was underwhelming, to say the least.

Step 2
Follow the directions on the package for best results and dye patterns.

Really, Michaels*?

The package directions weren’t much better, and didn’t seem to offer the pattern shown in the picture, so we decided to dispense with their “rules” and choose our own pattern adventure. He wanted his to look like a Canadian flag (-ish), and I opted for a classic swirl, hoping against hope that I wasn’t going to look like a peppermint candy when all was said and done.

After a quick dunk in soda ash, they were ready for dyeing. Besides the single bottle of red we had bought last year, we found a couple other partial bottles of red in our stash and thought, “Why not?” I don’t know that it made a huge difference, but I’d like to think they lent a certain depth of colour.

Rinse time! His turned out beautifully, but I should have gotten down into the folds of mine a little bit more with the dye. But I can’t be too upset, for two reasons: 1) if I had wanted a solid red shirt, I would have bought one, and 2) the swirl lines came out well, and don’t look like Christmas candy. I’ll call that a win. If I squint, it looks a bit like a burst of fireworks, which is certainly a propos.

But wait, there’s more! The original tutorial had “Canada” in a pretty unremarkable font, straight across the chest. We found a design we liked on the Silhouette Design Store and edited it so we were left with this:

I found some inexpensive placement guides on Amazon to help centre designs on t-shirts and make sure they’re a reasonable distance from the collar, and the adult-sized one proved to be immeasurably (or actually, measurably) helpful here.

The final product(s):

Thanks for looking! 🙂

*Is anyone else bothered by the fact that the founder of that craft chain opted to not add an apostrophe and make it possessive? It takes everything I have not to spell it as “Michael’s”. And every time I see “Michaels”, I expect to see messieurs Keaton, Caine, Bolton, etc. all lined up, rather than aisles of craft supplies.

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Far out, man!

wittychild

When I was a Young Personâ„¢, I went through a massive hippie phase, but in the whitest, most uptight way possible.  No illicit drugs or free love for this honey badger; my hippiedom was confined to doodling peace signs and rikki-tikki flowers on my notebooks, wailing along with Big Brother and the Holding Company, and bemoaning the fact that I never got to Woodstock despite having parents who were barely old enough to attend (an older, more self-aware Witty Child knows this was probably for the best, since I like hygiene and dislike crowds, but still…all those musical acts…).  Oh, and tie-dyeing like it was going out of style (it was).  I eventually stopped doing it when I ran out of places to wear it and people to give it to, but still always liked the look of it.

When I found out from my friend a few months ago that he had tried it as a child, with limited success due to some faulty technique on his mother’s part, I decided it was time to break out the rubber bands again.  We turned his apartment into a sweatshop – literally: it was boiling hot out-of-doors, and because we were situated on the linoleum floor of the hallway in order to minimize damage from drips and to allow access to both the kitchen and bathroom faucets, neither of us benefited from any breeze the open windows might have provided – and got our hippie on.

We had to soak the shirts in soda ash in batches due to space constraints, but found that each 20-minute soak was approximately just enough time to get the current shirt finished and wrapped in plastic, and rinse off our gloved hands before starting all over again.

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Not exactly awe-inspiring, are they?  In order to shower, he had to gingerly remove them and try not to drip dye out of the ends while they did their overnight soak.

But when he unfurled them and rinsed them out the next morning, well:

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Has anyone ever tried this with children?  I’m appalled that they market some of these kits as a fun birthday party or day camp activity, considering the mess that two grown adults with fully developed motor skills made.  I can’t imagine that being relaxing!

This has slaked my craving for a while, but I’d like to get my hands on a softer, cotton-poly blend shirt rather than the $4 Fruit of the Loom special from the men’s department at Wal-Mart – now that we’ve got our technique down, spending a little extra on raw textiles wouldn’t break my heart.

Thanks for looking…and peace out! 🙂