The Joys of Tie-Dye

Tie-dying in process...beware
Tie-dying in process...beware

You know how sometimes you get an idea, and you think its a really good idea, and then you try it and you realize you’re not really as brilliant as you think. Well, I had one of those ideas recently.

I won’t bore you with the exact details of how my mind works, but I eventually decided that it would be a great idea to tie-dye a few of the FSPW white t-shirts. When we moved offices I discovered that a number of the new t-shirts had some little dots on them. Instead of throwing them away I figured tie-dying them would make them useable and fun. So I surf the great and wonderful web and found what I assumed would be an easy and fun tie-dye kit.

Caught red-handed!
Caught red-handed!

Well the tie-dye kit arrived (complete with an instruction video and everything), and my friend Spring and I decided that we would dye the shirts the Tuesday after the 4th of July. Of course, that day was one of those days that makes you glad you live in North Idaho (or Western Montana) so Spring and I went to City Beach first and preceded to fall asleep on the beach. When we woke up, we went to the office and in our slightly-delirious-sun-soaked-state, we attempted to tie-dye.

The office isn’t exactly equipped for tie-dying t-shirts but we managed to improvise (we used the coffee pot to heat up water, etc). Thankfully we had a HUGE plastic sheet that I laid on the floor to protect the carpet. While Spring was folding the t-shirts into fun patterns, I mixed up the dye. Which quickly resulted in me dying all of the fingers on my right hand fuchsia.

And so began the tie-dying…of ourselves. I think we got as much dye on ourselves as we did on the shirts. Amazingly, we did not get any on the office. When we finished we had 17 lumps of cotton lying on the plastic, splattered with multiple colors. And these were supposed to turn into t-shirts? I was skeptical.

Thanks for all your help Spring
Thanks for all your help Spring!

Twenty-four hours later I began unwrapping the rubber bands holding the cotton in place while rinsing the shirts out under a hose. Amazingly, the shirts had survived! Bright colors created patterns across Monte’s face. Swirls, bulls eyes, and mirror images created patterns that could have come straight out of the 70s. Success! My idea didn’t fail as horribly as I thought!

Lessons to be learned from this venture…don’t tie-dye in your office, coffee pots are very useful, and make sure you have a good friend to laugh with you when green dye sprays everywhere!

(P.S. Come purchase your very own hand-tie-dyed t-shirt at one of our upcoming events!)

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Comments

  1. My own daughter got the same idea last year. For some reason she decided to ty-dye several white T-shirts, of various sizes. Then she decided that Patty and myself should be the recepients of their masterful work! The process worked well and as I pulled on one of my artistically-colored Tee shirt I flashed back to the early 1970’s -when I had worn my first tye-dye T-shirt. I have to admit, it was not a wonderful ‘flash from the past!” I accually felt it wasn’t working for me anymore. I still have several of my gifts of colorful Tee shirts upstairs in my drawer, way down at the bottom. I think I’m hiding them there. Lesson to be learned; at the age of 18 tye dye shirts work, regardless of the calendar date; at the age of, (well you get my point), when one adds a lot of numbers to age 18 then tye-dye doesn’t work so wel. So… enjoy your new creations; age-wise, this is your time! God bless! Thanks for the memory. Pastor Doug

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