To Dye For
My husband and I do our own laundry. We have different techniques and both of us are too stubborn to submit to the other's way of laundering. When he thought he ruined his favorite new shirt, however, I stepped in to help fix it. Somehow the detergent managed to discolor it, so I decided to buy some Rit Dye and try to fix it. Now if you've been reading my blog at all, you'll know that I can't go to the craft store and buy dye without making a craft out of it.
I don't think I've tie dyed anything since the 80's but as long as I was buying dye, why not? Besides, my step daughter was beyond thrilled at the thought of this particular craft. You also know, if you've been reading my blog, that I usually mess things up the first time around and this one was no different. I read a bunch of articles online about the best way to tie dye and tried to combine all of the different advice. The first time out we attempted to do an ombre effect, I quickly realized this was way too ambitious. We had a maroon colored t-shirt and decided to mix colors to result in a purple ombre. After two failed attempts at making this work, we gave up and decided to choose a simple tie dye and go back to the basics to figure out where we were going wrong. A quick trip back to the store produced a $5 white, 100% cotton t-shirt. I learned that 100% cotton is helpful in producing a full proof tie dye.
My step daughter took to Youtube to try to find a pattern that she wanted and chose a polka dot pattern. Keeping it simple was our mantra on this one since we were hoping for success on our third try. She used some old rubber bands and knotted up her shirt. I did my best to follow the instructions exactly and even used the stove top method to keep the water as hot as possible since the instructions said this was a must. The shirt came out perfect! The color was a deep blue and the circle pattern was perfection! Then we rinsed and washed it and it faded to a light lavender. Again, not sure what exactly happened there but, luckily, my step daughter loved it so I dodged a bullet there. No fourth attempt was necessary.
I'm not going to lie, my Type A side really wanted to go back at it to figure out how to make it perfect but I ran out of dye and didn't have it in me to go back to the store yet again. We had already bought a bedazzled iron on horse shoe so we slapped that on it. When all else fails, resort to rhinestones to fix all mistakes.
On a side note, I dyed my husband's shirt twice and could never get it to work. The color was perfection, but the shirt didn't dye evenly and it left white marks all over it. I'm still working on that project. I gave up for now but will not be defeated. I'm pretty sure I'm going to have to strip the color and try again. We pretty much spent most of the day dying and re-dying with mixed results. I have to say, this was a fun craft and totally worth it!
