Tie-Dye Jack-o-Lantern Tees

Directions for this project came from the Family Fun magazine, Oct. 2008 issue.


We used RIT dye, bought at craft stores for about $2.99 a box, color Sunshine Orange--Mixing 2 boxes, instead of 1 box, to the 3 gallons of water for our 7 t-shirts. We let our shirts "stew" for about 20 minutes, each kid taking his/her turn stirring the pot. We are very happy with the color that they turned out--O.K. so maybe L. isn't exactly thrilled with orange, but she was a good sport and went along with the rest of us.
Hint #1: Depending on how you decide to dry your shirts (line dry or dryer) you will definitely need more than one day to do this project.--tying, dying, and drying on one day and embellishing the jack-0-lantern faces on another day or two. If you put faces on the back of the shirt you will first have to let the front side dry and then embellish the back of the shirt.Hint #2: If you have really small people at your house, you may want to do the majority of the rubber banding yourself before letting them "help". It doesn't take a terribly long time but, if like our house, you have a number of kids who require help all at the same time then it could get frustrating for the helper and the helpee.
One of the more exciting parts of this project for the kids was cutting off the rubber bands to get the big "reveal" of the design they each created. This was their first tie-dye experience and so they weren't sure how it all would work. We had a bigger kid help a little kid do the cutting, but then the little kid could unravel the rubber bands tied around the shirt. Here are a couple of the finished products. At our kids' school they cannot wear costumes, so they all plan on wearing their shirts on Thursday for the class party day. Lucky us, we don't have school this year on Halloween. I can't wait to sleep in!