The first shirts came out pretty well. We placed the shirts in soda ash water then tied them with rubber bands, mixed up the procion dye colors with water , then put that on the shirts. Covered the shirts with plastic for two days. then rinsed them out, washed them in the washing machine, a couple of times to get all of the excess dye out, then dried them in the dryer.
What did I learn? The colors in the first shirts came out great. The second batch of shirts I did one month later. I used the first batch of dye I had mixed with only water. I only needed yellow so mixed up yellow as a new color. Even though the dye was mixed with only water, and the tops were capped, the colors had lost some of their brilliance and they came out faded looking. I also noticed that Mickey didn't show up well when I put yellow over the stitched areas. Not enough contrast. So in the future I will throw away or somehow right away use up the dye I've mixed up.
I don't have enough time to make up another batch of shirts as I have to mail these off so they can take them to Disney.
Picture time:
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| This is my grandson's first shirt, I helped him with the stitching as they had us sewing with dental floss, which was difficult to pull through two layers of tee shirt. Both he and his mom wanted the identical pattern on the back. Then they did the dyeing. |
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| This is the second batch of shirts that I did, as they had gone home. I ened up pinning the front and back together so they would remain the same while stitching. |
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| You take your pattern, (this was blown up 1.5 X), and you trace around it in pencil. |
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| The next step, you stitch on your pencil lines. Do the Mickey head first, because if you haven't got quite enough floss to go all the way around you can pull it up some to finish. You want only one length of floss around the head, and then one separate length of floss on the circle around the head. If you do Mickey first and have to pull it up some you can still go around the circle. However, if you do the circle first and have to draw it up, it's much more difficult to do Mickeys head. |
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| Here it is all stitched out. Then you pull the ends of the floss on the lead together as tight as you can make it. Tie the floss in a knot and snip the floss about 1/2 inch from the knot. Then you pull up the circle in the same manner, as tight as you can get it, knot the floss and snip 1/2 inch from the knot. |
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| This is what it looks like all pulled up, kind of looks like a mouse head! |
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| Since I used Procion dye from Dharma Trading I needed to soak the tees in a solution of 1 cup of Soda Ash to 1 gal of water, for 15 or so minutes. Then I squeeze the excess water out of them. They are ready to put dye on them. The soda ash acts as a fixer for the dye. |
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| My dye has been mixed with water and put into squeeze type bottles and labled with their colors. |
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| I use plastic bins to do my tie dying over. I find that using plastic bins, I can wash them out and re-use them over and over. This bin has nylon window screening clipped over it using clothes pins to clip it to the bin's edge. I always put dye ready fabric in the bottom of the bins to catch any drips. Those are always a surprise. On these three, I couldn't find the rest of my rubber bands to tie the rows of colors. I found them later on my wrist which were under my rubber gloves. Duh! |
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| This is my smaller bin, that I have a grate that I bought at Goodwill. What I try to do is to keep Mickeys head off to one end so that the colors won't mix into it. |
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| I have found in the past that waiting 48 hours instead of 24 hours of resting under the plastic provides the best colors. Here I am starting the rinsing process. Using cold water I rinse them off in the sink. I take off the rubber bands and carefully take out the floss. Rinse again. |
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| Then I fill a 5 gal bucket with cold water and let them sit in it for an hour or so. I may do the bucket routine a couple more times. After I'm done with the bucket rinses, I take them down to the washing machine and use hot water and run them through a minimum of two full wash/rinse cycles. Then they get thrown in the dryer. |
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| My Grandson's second shirt. Notice how orange the red color came out, and the blue and green are quite faded. |
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| My daughters second shirt. This is not a plain tee shirt, it's a wrap front tee, very light weight. |
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| A close up of Mickey on my daughter's shirt. |
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| My son-in law's first shirt. |
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| My son-in law's second shirt as he didn't get to make one the first time around. |
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| Se how good Mickey's head shows up. A much better contrast. |
There will be more dying in my future, I'm having so much fun!
Sew see you later,
Bette
