Name: Melissa

Message: I am doing tie dye shirts with 150 preschool and elementary age kids.  I was wondering if you could guestimate the amount of time I should allow for the craft?  Also, do you have any idea how many ozs or lbs of dye I would need to purchase to dye 150 youth size shirts?  And lastly, if I break this up into small sessions will it hurt the outcome, such as 1st day, pass out shirts and have them chose design and rubberband their shirt and 2nd day soak in soda ash and dye shirts?  Thank you so much for your very informative site.  I have never tie dyed before myself but after reading your information I am really excited about this project.

Before you do this project, it would be a very good idea for you to try a little tie-dyeing at home, just to make sure you have a handle on how to do everything. It's not difficult, but practice can be helpful. Try dyeing a shirt for yourself.

I think that breaking this project up into multiple days is an excellent idea. 

Day one, have them label their shirts some way, or you do it for them. You can buy brass (non-rusting!) safety pins and use them to attach tags, which you can cut out of Tyvek envelopes and label with permanent black Sharpie markers, or you can mark on the tag inside the collar of the shirt. (Look for shirts that have tags sewn in, as opposed to the ones with tags printed on the inside of the neck; buy only 100% cotton shirts, which are not stain-resistant.)

They can fold and tie or rubber-band their shirts either dry, or moistened with plain water. Moistening them with water helps in tying more detail designs, but it's not required. I think you should just have them tie the shirts while they are dry, to simplify things. Simple ties are fine: bullseye, stripes, or random crumple.

In the evening, a day or two before applying the dye, you should mix up the dye powders yourself. Wear a dust mask or respirator so that you do not breathe the dye powder. It's not horribly toxic, but you can develop an allergy to the dye if you are careless. The dye mixtures will stay good for a week at room temperature, as long as they are not exposed to any soda ash at all. You will keep the soda ash separate. (If you buy a Tulip brand tie-dye kit, the soda ash is mixed in with the dye, in which case the dye must be used immediately.)

Be sure to advise the parents to send their children in clothes that will not be a great loss if they get stained with dye. You can buy disposable plastic aprons to help protect the children's clothes. Don't forget to buy at least one pair of size extra-small plastic or latex gloves for each child! You will need plastic to protect the tables, or better yet go outside and do the dyeing on the lawn if there is one.

On the second day or the project (which does not have to be the very next day after tying the dry shirts), soak the shirts in the soda ash, squeeze out the extra water, and apply the dye. Have a large number of plastic bags available. Ziplock bags are excellent; plastic grocery bags usually have holes in the bottom. After the dye is applied, pop each shirt into a plastic bag and keep it in warm place (or outside in the summer heat) overnight, at 70°F or warmer. It's okay to leave them an extra day if necessary for your schedule.

After the dye has had plenty of time to react with the shirts and the soda ash, take them to a washing machine. Washing 150 shirts out by hand would be terrible. You may dump a washing-machine-load into a washer full of cool water, all at once. I like to use a pair of children's blunt-ended scissors to cut the rubber bands off as I dump them in. I do not like to hand rinse each of a large number of shirts. After one cool rinse, wash the shirts at least twice in hot water with detergent or Synthrapol. Dry them in a clothes dryer if one is available.

On the third day, you can hand out the shirts to their artists. This is when you realize how important the labeling step was.

You can estimate that 150 youth-size t-shirts will take approximately as much dye as 75 adult-sized t-shirts.  A "big group" tie-dye kit from Dharma will be more than enough, as it can produce up to 100 adult sized t-shirts; it costs about $70, and contains twelve ounces of Procion MX type dye powder. Alternatively, you could buy a number of Jacquard or Tulip tie-dyeing kits from a local crafts store, but the smaller kits will add up to a greater expense. (Avoid the Rit tie-dye kits!) The shirts sold by crafts stores are usually overpriced and often 50% polyester, which you do not want; look for 100% cotton. You can buy youth-size t-shirts for about $2 each from Dharma.

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