10 Tie-Dye Tips from Our First Time Tie-Dyeing

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This summer is the first time I ever tie-dyed.  Ever.  I’d always been worried about the mess.  I had a tie-dye afternoon this summer with my 3 kiddos and learned lots.  The biggest thing I learned is that it’s really not that messy and that my kids loved it.  Let me share 10  tie-dye tips from our first time tie-dyeing that may help you.

My kiddos and I had a great time tie-dyeing t-shirts for the first time.  As soon as we were done, the kids asked when we could tie-dye again.  Since we all had fun together, I’m all in on another tie-dye afternoon.  These tips that will help us have even more fun next time.

10 Tie-Dye Tips

1.  I recommend you use the Tulip Tie-Dye kit (thanks for the sample kits from Tulip ) because it contains everything you’ll need.  But you’ll want to add a vinyl table cloth and lots of paper towels to your supply list.

2.  Use a vinyl table cloth to protect your work area and wipe it off frequently to prevent errant drops of dye marking your designs, your clothes and arms. We didn’t use purple dye and didn’t want purple spots on this design.  The spots were from drops of dye left on the surface from a previous tie-dye design.

3.  Wear the gloves that come in the kit while tie-dye and while rinsing.

4.  If more than one person is tie-dyeing at the same time, mark the tag of the shirt with a Sharpie with each person’s name.  You’ll never ever figure out which shirts belong to who if you don’t. (luckily we did figure out the owners of all but 2 of the shirts, but we’re still not sure who those 2 shirts belong to).

5.  Try making your own designs, they can turn out pretty cool.

6.  Use the red dye carefully.  At times it looks like crime scene evidence (see the left side of the shirt above and this all red dyed shirt).

7.  With tie-dye less is less.  Use more dye than you think you should. We had wanted more color and less white than turned out on these shirts.

8.  The black dye is really cool.  When I first saw the bottle of black tie-dye I thought, “Ugh.  Why?” But it turned out much better than I expected and is one color I want to experiment more with next time.

9.  Use recycled vegetable bags from the market to hold your dyed shirts for the 8+ hours waiting time.  Just tie them shut and then throw them away when you’re done.

10.  Look for fun unplanned designs in your completed pattern.  See the penguin?

I hope that our tie-dye tips will help you for your first time tie-dyeing.  If you’ve tie-dyed before, do you have any tips for me?

Check back to see our tie-dye fashion for teens and tweens.