Are you looking for a fun DIY 4th of July shirt to make? We have made tie dye butterflies and a tie dye star banner so why not branch out and try making tie dye T-shirts right? 🙂 We made these adorable tie dye shirts (and a onesie) for the 4th of July! They were very simple to make! You could also do this same technique for a towel, blanket, dress, etc. You honestly can tie dye anything! As long as it’s cotton and a white background to start.
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Materials needed:
- Gildan T-shirt
- Toddler T-shirt
- Onesie – optional 😉
- Tulip tie dye – we used red and turquoise but you could use a darker blue
- Clorox bleach pen
- Rubber bands – the kits come with them but I always like to have extras
- Trash bags – for surface area
- Plastic grocery bags or gallon ziploc bags (2 per shirt)
- Large bowl – we used one from the dollar store
Directions:
Prepare your tie dye colors according to package directions and set aside.
Dampen each shirt and lay flat on garbage bag.
Wrap a rubber band 3 times underneath the sleeves of the shirt (across the chest).
Wrap additional rubber bands down the shirt. You can do as many or as little as you want depending on how many stripes you want. We placed 6 rubber bands to have 3 red stripes.
Wearing gloves, squirt the red dye on every other space.
I wanted white between the blue and red so I made sure to leave the first space on top white.
Continue the same technique with each shirt.
Place the tie dyed lower section of the shirt inside a grocery bag or ziploc and tie off.
Place the upper section of the shirt into a bowl.
Squirt the turquoise (or blue) die onto the top of shirt. Don’t saturate completely, you want some white to have a tie dye look.
She really enjoyed helping with this part! 🙂
Wrap the upper part of the shirt in a separate grocery bag or ziploc and tie off. Let them sit for 6 – 24 hours. The longer they sit the darker the colors will turn out. We let ours sit for 24 hours.
Wearing gloves, carefully cut the rubber bands off of the shirts and place them in a sink. Make sure to keep the blue dye next to the blue, etc. They will still bleed onto other parts of the shirt if you’re not careful before rinsing.
Rinse each shirt until the water runs clear.
Place your shirts in the washing machine on the largest load setting in hot water with a little detergent.
Dry your shirts in the dryer or hang to dry. You can leave them like this, but we wanted to add some stars!
Place a piece of cardboard or paper bag inside the top portion of the shirt. You could also use one of these cardboard shirt forms! Using a Clorox bleach pen, draw stars on top of the blue.
The stars will spread and get bigger as the bleach dries so keep that in mind when making them.
Draw stars on the front and back of the shirts and allow to dry.
Wash and dry your shirts again! You can now wear your fun, unique Patriotic shirts to all of your 4th of July festivities! Or you could still sport them at home which is what we will be doing this year! 😉
We really loved how these turned out! If the shirt is too big use a plastic elastic to create a knot! 🙂 I hope everyone has a wonderful and safe 4th of July!
