We have a tie dye craze going on in my house. It’s back apparently! I have a fashion conscious 13 year old who asked me to make 4 green tie dyed t-shirts for their upcoming swimming carnival and of course I couldn’t say no – it brings back some memories!

So after a few green ones, I got carried away and started making every day wear ones for all my boys…

It’s so easy! I hopped on YouTube to watch a few videos just to remind me how to do it. Did you tie dye when you were a kid in the 80s? Bleach your jeans? Make a bandana? Yep, that was me!

Here’s a quick run down on how I did it…

Kmart have lots of plain white t-shirts for $5. Although these are men’s sizes because Cruise wears men’s, but I also got smaller sizes from Best & Less for Tex and Chevy.

Wet the t-shirt with a spray bottle – front and back.

Below are 2 effects we went with. The first is the scrunched and the second is the spiral. Scrunching is easy – you just willy nilly scrunch up the t-shirt and pat it like pizza dough then place the same rubber bands around it like the spiral below.

For the spiral start in the middle of the shirt and spin the shirt with your fingers – and tuck it as you go.

Put rubber bands around to hold it in to place. It will work much easier if the t-shirt is damp so don’t forget that step.

To make a cool spiral pattern use 4 dye colours in 4 corners. Overlap some of the colours in the middle so you create a mix of purple and orange too!

What you’ll need:

• Spotlight have tie dye kits (which I bought). It has 3 bottles in blue, red and yellow (primary colours so you can also make additional colours). The kit contains rubber bands and gloves.
• Single colour dye if you want that. I bought Kelly Green Jacquard dye (from Spotlight in a packet) and mixed it in a pot for the solid t-shirts.
• Rubber bands and gloves (if you don’t buy a kit).
• Squirty bottles (if you don’t buy a kit). I bought a plastic sauce bottle from Spotlight. It’s much much much easier to apply dye from a bottle especially if you’re doing a multicolour spiral pattern!
• The single packet colour makes up huge amounts of dye and you could probably dye 5 t-shirts. I saved some dye after I was finished in an old drink bottle.
• I did the entire project in/on my kitchen sink. It was very easy to clean up and everything washed and wiped up very easy. It wasn’t too messy.
• The colours may look really bright when you put them on, but they do wash out and fade.
• Once you’ve applied the colour, wrap each little parcel in a plastic shopping bag and let it sit for 12-24 hours.
• Rinse in the sink and then wash through the machine without any detergent.
• Then they are ready to wear!

Here’s a few of my creations! I have another pile sitting in my laundry waiting to be washed out. Addicted much? Ha!

Have you tie dyed recently? Going to give it a go? Kids are loving this fashion they tell me! Not sure I’ll be wearing it though haha.

♥ KC.