A couple years ago, while we were at the beach, we had a huge family tie-dye sesh. We had buckets and buckets of Rit Dye colors, tons of white t-shirts and tank tops, and hours to have fun in the backyard. It was so much fun to make not only fun summer shirts but also the memories. It was just so much fun to get together, be creative, and have those wonderful memories and pictures to look back at.
Last year, I thought it would be fun to make 4th of July tie dye shirts for the kids, my husband, and myself. We had just moved into our new house, we weren’t going to the beach (same this year), we were tired from moving, and it was a simply activity that was just fun. This year, we’re going to make another set of tie dye shirts! I thought it’d be fun to document what we did.
SUPPLIES
T-shirts (you can find them on sale this time of year at Michael’s)
Rit Dye (I like the liquid kind)
Salt (for cotton), 1/4 cup per 1 gallon of water
Water
Rubber Bands
Buckets or containers
Plastic gloves
Trash bags
The steps are so, so simple.
Prepare your work area. I prefer to do the dyeing outside. I lay down many trash bags. There is one for each bucket of dye, plus one for each shirt.
Prepare your buckets of water. I did about a gallon in each bucket, plus the 1/4 cup of salt and Rit Dye. I found these sand buckets at Target for about $2.99.
Prepare your shirts. Depending on what design you want, you’ll twist or scrunch the shirt and then secure it with a rubber band. We had a variety of rubber band sizes so the patterns vary.
Once everything is prepared and ready, put on your gloves. Slowly dip the different parts of the shirts into the buckets. The longer you let the shirt soak in the dye, the deeper the color will be. If you want the color to fade into the shirt, just hold one part of the shirt into the bucket and let the dye creep up the fabric. It’s so much fun to watch!
Once you’ve finished with dying your shirts, lay them out on the trash bags. It’s best to do this on a sunny day, because the heat of the sun will set the dye. Even so, you will still want to wash your shirts by themselves for the first couple of times to insure all the dye has been exhausted from the fabric. After I feel certain there’s no more dye to come off the fabric, I will throw these in with dark loads only.
Here are just a couple of pictures I took quickly after I washed two of the shirts. I love how they turned out!
I hope this tutorial was helpful! We love doing small projects like this for holidays.
Happy 4th of July!
Rebecca has been writing about style, beauty, and lifestyle topics since 2011. Thank you so much for reading this post! Feel free to leave any questions or comments below. I love hearing from you!
