Adventures with Tie-Dye

For Christmas this past year my dad and stepmother gave Rylan a tie-dying kit. I had put off doing it for awhile- when it was cold, since I would rather handle permanent dye outside than inside. But even when the weather turned nice and sunny I still put it off....4 kids, one of who doesn't like to get messy, one of who gets stained just standing there, and 2 who are too little to responsibly handle the dye....but I was reading on The Pirate Mom Dot Com yesterday about their tie-tye experience and thought we'd give it a go.... So I bound up the shirts- 9 total in various kids sizes and set them to soak in the soda ash solution. Then came the dye.
You would think I would put aprons on them, wouldn't you? They did well....and I was the only one with dye covered hands.

Then we wrapped them in plastic for 24 hours! That is an awful long time for impatient people to wait.

But time was up this afternoon and Cale helped me rinse and unbind them. Then we had to wash and dry them in the machines. So another 2 hours later here are the shirts:

I really like them, especially the spirally ones. I ended up with lots of extra dye so I made a shirt for me and even a couple pairs of underwear!

It wasn't nearly as much trouble as I anticipated and they all love thier shirts.