Add an explosion of color to your life! Tie dyed T-shirts are fun to wear and surprisingly easy to make.
With just a few essentials and some patience, you can create one-of-a-kind, Rupert-worthy clothing! (see featured story this month)
To make, you’ll need:
A white T-shirt
Several colors of fabric dye (we used red, blue, yellow,
purple and green)
Squeeze bottles for the dye
Rubber bands
Rubber gloves
Newspaper to cover your work surface
Plastic bags or plastic wrap
What to do:
To make a swirl pattern
Pinch the center of the shirt, making sure you are grabbing both the top and bottom layer of the shirt. As you continue pinching the center of the shirt, twist the fabric around and around. It will seem like you are making a huge cinnamon roll! Keep going until the entire shirt is a big circle. Hold the rolled shirt together with four rubber bands. When they are put on the rolled T-shirt, they should all intersect in the middle and make eight wedges, all approximately the same size. It will look like eight pieces of pie!
To make a bulls-eye pattern
Pinch the center of the shirt, making sure you are grabbing both the top and bottom layer (front and back) of the shirt. Then hold the shirt up so it hangs down. Squeeze the T-shirt fabric so it resembles a cylinder. Wrap rubber bands
tightly along the entire length of the cylinder.
Next:
Lay out several layers of newspaper to cover your work surface. Dampen the T-shirt. Put the rubber gloves on. Squirt different color dyes into each individual section created by the rubber bands. Be sure to saturate the shirt with the dye. You will need to poke the tip of the squirt bottle into the layers of fabric to make sure the dye is getting into all parts of the shirt.
After the dye has been applied, wrap your shirt completely with plastic wrap or place it in a plastic bag; close the bag. Set aside for at least 6 hours so the dye has time to set.
Remove rubber bands. Wash shirt separately in hot water with a little laundry detergent.
Once you’ve mastered tie-dying a T-shirt, you might want to try the same technique on pillow cases, tube socks and bandannas.