Tie Dye Party

Last year in September, we had a T-Shirt Decorating Day program. It went so well, I decided to do something similar this year. Last year, we had tie dye as an option, this year, we did tie dye as the whole program! So the kids were told to bring something to tie dye (shirt, socks, beach towel, tote bag, whatever) and then the library provided instruction and the tie dye (I had the stained hands to prove it. I wish I had taken a picture!!).

We had 26 kids at this event, which officially makes it a smash hit in my book. I had to call in 2 extra helpers because I didn’t think just myself and my 1 staff member could handle this on our own (I was right). Overall the program went really smoothly, even with so many kids. I hope they wear their tie dye to school soon so I can see how it all worked out! I was going to tie dye something for myself but when I saw how many kids we were going to have I decided that I would probably be too busy to do my own (I was right again). haha

I bought Rit Dye last year and we still had some left over. I was given some powder dye from one of my staff members so I used some of that too! We had 24 bottles with dye in them, roughly 4 of each color (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple). The kids did a really great job sharing their colors! (Notice that the random ketchup and mustard bottles really DID have red and yellow in them!)

The first thing I did was sit them down and talk about procedures. Here are some of the most important things I mentioned to them:

• LOOK AT THE LABEL on the bottle!! (Many of the colors looked similar in the bottles)
• The dye will stick wherever you put it on your shirt
• The dye will stain your hands
• The dye will stain your clothes
• The dye will stain OTHER PEOPLE’S CLOTHES
• The dye will stain other people’s projects
• You HAVE to wash the clothes/materials before you use them

Then I asked them who had done tie dye before. And about 10 of them raised their hands. So at that moment I knew this was going to be even more complicated than I thought!

We spread them out at tables and gave them rubber bands to wrap around their shirts. We printed out a few examples so they could wrap them around for a certain outcome. We ended up doing the rubber bands for most of the kids, but some of the older ones were able to do it themselves.

After everyone was finished with the rubber bands, we went outside to do the dye. We had three tables set up, with tablecloths. The most successful way I’ve seen tie dye done, is to put a cooling rack on top of a cookie sheet and then put the shirt on the cooling rack. That way, the dye will drip onto the cookie sheet, but the cooling rack is raised enough that the shirt doesn’t sit in a puddle of dye. We did this for *most* of the kids, but I had a few more cooling racks than cookie sheets, so we spent some time mopping up dye with paper towels so it didn’t run down the table and right onto the kids’ clothes.

Here are some photos of them doing the dye!

Before they left, each student got a gallon bag with their name on it (we did the names as they came in so everyone had one), we put their shirt right into the bag with their name and then stapled instructions to the bag. Below are the instructions that I found online that I sent with the kids.

It was a little hectic but overall a wonderful program!! If I see any kiddos wearing their shirts to school I will edit this post and add photos below!

T-Shirt Decorating Day!

For one of our September after school programs, we thought it would be fun and cool for the students to have different ways to decorate t-shirts and let them be creative!

I had 20 children attend, and 3 total librarians working the program. There were a few moms/grandmas that also came out to help and that was *awesome*!

I asked that parents/guardians register their children in advance so that I knew how much dye to make and markers and stuff to purchase, but the library did not provide the t-shirts. It was made clear in the flier that students were expected to bring their own, and I called everyone on my sign up list the day before to remind them. That part went over really well! I always get a little nervous when we require things like that, but making sure I had all the right t-shirt sizes would have been a lot, and I would have felt terrible if someone ended up without a shirt and it was my fault. It was way easier to have them bring their own!

They had three options for decorating:

1. Tie dye
2. Fabric marker/paint freehand
3. Iron on design and color with fabric markers/paint

For the Tie Dye:

Tie dye was the *only* thing they could do if they chose this option. Since the dye would still be wet, it wasn’t possible to do an iron on design or to paint/draw after the tie dying was done. Some of them had a hard time with this, and it meant they were done really early.

But we had a whole table for the rubber banding process, and a table outside to do the tie dye. They were told they MUST put gloves on as soon as they were finished with the rubber bands, before they even stepped outside to the tie dye table.

Tie dye kits are expensive, so I followed this how-to on how to tie dye for cheap! It uses the following ingredients:

Rit dye

Water (hot- I ran water through the Keurig to heat it and it was HOT)

Salt

Applicator bottles/spray bottles

**Personal recommendation!!** If you take a cookie sheet and put a cooling rack on top of it, the extra dye drips down onto the cookie sheet and you won’t accidentally set your t-shirt into a puddle of dye! It worked great!

Once the tie dyeing was complete, T-shirts were placed into a gallon sized bag and their name was written on it to take home!

For the iron on designs:

I have one of those Cricut crafting machines and it makes my job a zillion times easier. For this particular program, it was a HUGE hit. I purchased iron on vinyl sort of in bulk from Amazon, and using the machine, I was able to cut out tons of designs that would iron right onto the shirts!

I will say, the unicorns and LEGO guys went the quickest but most all of them got used!

A regular iron would work to transfer this, but I have a heat press, so I brought that to use. It made it a little easier, and that way I could guarantee that I got the whole design at once (some were larger than iron-sized) and that I could press it for ~30 seconds and it would be good to go! I kept the heat press in the back room and had them line up (a few in the room and a few outside) so that I could get their designs ironed on.

Once I got that done, they were free to decorate however they chose! We had fabric paint and markers available, so most of them essentially turned theirs into a t-shirt coloring page!

There were a few who chose to freehand draw on their shirts with markers/paint but for the most part it was a pretty even split between the tie dye and the iron on. It was the perfect number of students for this involved of a program!

I’ve gotten a few messages/notes from parents about how much their child loves their shirt and it makes my heart grow three sizes each time. I am SO thrilled that they had such a good time and I hope to see them wearing their t-shirts to school!