Tie-Dye Shirts Made Easy
If you’ve ever made your own tie-dye shirt, you know that it can be a real mess… especially if you’re using the right chemistry to make really vivid looking shirts. While I’m no tie-dye expert, I learned from three people who used to travel with the Grateful Dead (well, they followed the Dead from gig to gig and sold their tie-dye apparel to the pickiest of Deadheads). The secret to making amazing tie-dye shirts is to use fiber reactive dyes.
The teachers and parents at Wilder Elementary in Littleton, Colorado reward each graduating 5th grader with the opportunity to make their own graduation tie-dye shirt. I joined the kids last week at school to share the science of tie-dye and to help them create a one-of-a-kind shirt.
Watched the video, and this seemed like a nice holiday time activity for the science club at school….so I asked my students to bring in shirts, and took all my old white ones destined for the trash in as freebies.
I was a total newbie in making tie-dye shirts, as were the vast majority of our students. What we created was fantastic. It was the best thing we’ve done in science club in a couple of years I thought. The kids were really excited with their shirts. Thanks to the video and the site for prompting me to get busy with this! It’s definitely messy, so take precautions for this, and be sure to tell the students to dress accordingly and to have lab aprons.