For those that haven't heard, Jack and I are preparing to embark on our latest adventure. More details later, but the short story is we are going on a seven night Mexican Riviera Disney cruise and spending a night at Disneyland after.
So I keep reading about all these people who have made Mickey tie dye shirts for their trips, and people who have bought them, and to be honest, tie dye has never really been my "thing". But I got to thinking about how we don't have t-shirts for this trip, since I made our other "We're Going to WDW" shirts for our WDW trips (and Jack's is so big it will probably fit him till he's 10). So then I started thinking about what we could wear for this trip, and I started thinking about all these other people and their tie dye shirts. So I figured, why not, I'd make some tie dye Mickey shirts, we could wear them for all our DCL trips (since I am already planning another) and if they turned out well I could make some for my family too (who will be joining us on our next DCL cruise). So off to Michael's I went...
They were having a sale on tshirts, 2 for $5. Then I started looking at dyes. I probably should have gone with a kit, but I wanted red and blue to be sort of DCL color themed, and the kits all had random colors. I spent a while looking at dyes, but eventually I settled on these:
I had heard complaints that RIT dye wasn't as bright, but that was fine with me, I wasn't going for bright. I figured pre-made liquid would eliminate at least one step, and I would have plenty of left over dye for my family's shirts later.
This process was a 3 day process, since I didn't have time to start on it till late on evening. I printed out a Mickey outline, and a smaller one for Jack and traced them onto our shirts with pencil
Then Jack and I headed upstairs to watch Spooky Buddies (not sure which was worse the movie or the stitching of the shirts... DO NOT let your children talk you into that movie...) while I got the dental floss going. Now let me say, I do not sew. I have many crafty ideas, but they mostly remain in my head because I'm not so good at the execution of these ideas. I have never in my life sewn anything. So I got started. First, my needle was too big, so I had to get a smaller one. Then the floss kept getting tangled. I started with mine. I was about halfway through when I realized I wasn't sure I was doing it right. I wasn't sure if I should be sewing over and under the traced line, or along it. I also didn't know what a basting stitch was. I refused to start over, so I did mine one way and Jack's the other.
Once you have them sewed up, you are supposed to pull the floss to make the Mickey pucker up.
That's as far as I got the first day because I realized I didn't have any rubber bands...
Once I managed to pilfer some rubber bands from work, the process continued... You are supposed to wrap rubber bands around the base of the puckered Mickey. This is to keep dye from seeping into the Mickey head so you can dye it differently. Originally I was going to leave our white.
Then according to some reports, you are supposed to soak the shirts in soda ash. I found a couple sets of instructions that just soaked them in water, and I decided rather than spending more $$, I would just go with water. Then you squeeze the water out, hold onto the Mickey and twist, until you end up with a shirt that looks like a danish.
Mid twisting
Then you put rubber bands across the "danish shirt" to divide the sections for dye-ing. I had originally planned on leaving the Mickey head white so I had already saran wrapped it, but once I started with the dye, I decided to make Mickey blue. Also we don't have saran wrap, we have Press and Seal, so I used that.
Now I was ready for the "fun" part! I opened the bottle of dye and...
It wasn't what I was expecting. I kinda thought there would be a little plastic thing with a hole in it for the dye to come out in a more controlled flow... but being a quick thinker (and not being willing to delay any more) I slapped some press and seal on the top, secured it with rubber bands, and poke a hole in it. NOW I was ready for the "fun" part!
One last look at a pristine white shirt...
I instantly knew this wasn't going to work right, but I plowed right on anyways. The dye wouldn't stay in it's section!!! It was dripping everywhere! Thank goodness we have a utility sink in our laundry room, I cannot even imagine what my mother would have done to me if I used her kitchen sink...
So anyways, dye is running all over the place and my hands are covered in it so I am leaving spots on the white sections and it's just a mess. But I learned from it and got it done and wrapped up and moved onto the second attempt. This time I did a much better job keeping control of it and keeping the dye in it's appropriate section and it was much easier. I got them both wrapped up and set them in the garage to sit overnight!
The next evening, I unwrapped the first one and got started rinsing. I didn't think to take a picture before rinsing, but this is what it looked like after...
So the part that confuses me is as I'm rinsing it out, the dye is running down the shirt and into other sections that were previously white... my shirt is a better example.
Just unwrapped (and I am not sure where all the dye went since I used a ton and my shirt was mostly white...):
After rinsing:
It's mostly purple now??? I think oh well, I'm sure once I get done washing it 5 times like I read in the instructions, some sort of dye magic will occur and it will go back to looking like it did when I unwrapped it... right??? I will say that my Mickey head ( the one I did the "wrong" way) came out much better than Jack's though the more I rinsed his shirt, the more defined the Mickey became.
Anyways, I washed it 5 or 6 times in the washer, as I had read, with nothing else in the washer. Then I threw it in the dryer. I pulled them out and...
Mine:
Jack's:
So needless to say, we will NOT be wearing these. My Mickey is basically completely gone, with the exception of the pencil outline which survived intact. The whole thing is a faded dirty looking color.
Jack's actually looks the best, but that's not saying much.
I know there are several places I could have gone wrong, maybe the soda ash is actually vital, maybe I didn't let them sit long enough (instructions said 6 hours, I did it 24...) maybe when you rinse you have to say some magic spell?? Who knows, but it has reaffirmed for me that tie dye is indeed "not my thing". Hindsight being 20/20, I should have bought them on Etsy or something...
