tie-dye ideas – Be The Route

This is a summertime favorite at our house, turning anything old or new into a tie-dye creation! We aren’t professionals by any means and each time we tie-dye, we learn something new. There is definitely something so exciting about opening up your creation with anticipation and surprise. This year we watched a couple videos on YouTube to help us get a better spiral effect, which is what Leo (7) was really excited about creating. Lily (9) found a cool video on how to create a tie-dye effect that looks like rain falling. If you’ve never given tie-dying a try, here are some tips and videos to help inspire your tie-dying adventure!

Supplies:

Something made of cotton to tie-dye
Rit Dye
Plastic squeeze bottles to put your dye into
Rubber bands or string
a plastic bag to put your creation in once done to sit for a couple days

How To Steps:

First, slightly dampen your shirt (or whatever you choose to tie-dye), then tie up or fold it- we’ve included some links to video ideas for this below. My kids like creating bulls-eye patterns, spirals and an accordion pattern – sometimes they just drop the dye and tie up the shirt in a unique way and see what happens!
Next, put about a teaspoon or more of the Rit dye into your squeeze bottle, fill with water and give a little shake.
Then find a spot to work, I like putting a tray under the kids shirts to catch the excess liquid, and then squeeze your color onto your shirt.
Once finished, put your shirt into a plastic bag to sit for at least two days
After the two days, rinse your shirt in cold water, squeeze out and hang to dry
Remember not to wash your shirts with other clothes in the beginning because the dye may still run!

Have Fun!

Here’s a link for how to fold your t-shirts to create the spiral effect. We were very happy with how our spiral’s turned out! https://youtu.be/2UJkPKHvruk

This is also another great post on Artbarblog.com for how to fold shirts and tie-dye with Indigo.