So, birthdays are kind of a big deal.  Now that I am on the wrong side of 35 (okay fine, the wrong side of 40) they no longer carry quite the level of excitement for me that they did when I was a kid, but I can still appreciate them as a milestone, blah blah blah.  For kids though, they are more exciting than just about anything else.  My daughter was deliberating for weeks before her eighth birthday about what she wanted to do for it.  She considered a swim party with a luau theme at the community pool, there was talk of a rock’n'roll party with a last-man-standing “Rock Band” competition on the Wii; but she finally settled on having a tie-dye party with her friends here at home.

Now, when we talked about what kind of activities she wanted to plan for the party, she was very specific about what would constitute a successful party. In her second-grade social universe your party lives or dies on what kind of cool craft you make at the party, and what kind of awesome favors you send home. With this particular party, it seemed like a no-brainer. Let each kid make a tie-dyed t-shirt to bring home! We sent out the invites, and got our supplies together for the party.

Here is what we got for the party, just to give you an idea of how easy it was!

12 plain white t-shirts (100% cotton, very important)

1 fiber-reactive tie-dye kit ( I highly recommend this one)

2 extra bottles of fiber-reactive dye

1 box disposable latex gloves

1 box gallon-sized ziploc-style bags

1 packet large rubber bands

When we set up for the party, the kids made a large Happy Birthday sign, on a foam-core board, and we hung it prominently, and started to decorate the front room and kitchen for the party.

Colorful balloons, and these dangly tie-dye decorations started things off.

Then we set up the kitchen with more balloons, streamers, and of course our super-groovy tie-dye tableware!

Once all the guests had arrived, we let the girls play, and set up the kitchen for the tie-dye project.  The level of hysteria excitement led us to decide to have the girls come in to do their dyeing in pairs, rather than all at once.  I cannot recommend this highly enough  when using brightly colored, very extremely permanent dyes.   If you care at all about everyone’s clothes, your walls and floor, the table,  your guest’s skin, etc.  you will keep this activity under tight control.

The latex gloves, are not actually supposed to be used this way. But the kids had an awful lot of fun with them!

Before the party, run the t-shirts through a cold water rinse cycle in the washing machine.  This will remove any remnants of chemicals from the shirts, and the dampened t-shirts will take the dye much more readily.  If you attempt to squirt dye on a dry shirt, it tends to bead up and roll right off.

Now there are all kinds of techniques for tie-dyeing and you can get some really incredible, intricately beautiful designs if you do it right.  Check out youtube.com for any number of tutorials on different methods.  Since this was our first time dyeing and our guests were fairly young, we decided to go with  a basic spiral design for our shirts.  (Although my husband Sean let a couple of the older kids do a sunburst design just for fun, when the younger kids had finished.)

Spread the t-shirt flat on the table and pinch a bit of fabric right in the middle.  Then twirl the fabric around until the t-shirt is bound up into a circular bundle.  Use rubber bands to keep the bundle together, and to create wedge-shaped sections of the shirt.

Using the bottles of dye, squirt sections of the t-shirt bundle, until it is fairly well saturated.  If it is your first time dyeing, or young children are doing it,  you should probably stick with only two or three colors per shirt.  If the dyes get too mixed on the shirt, they become muddy looking.  When the shirts are dyed, slip them into a labeled gallon ziploc bag and let them sit in a warm place overnight.

When the craft project is done, immediately feed your guests to prevent a revolution.

It may not work, though.

The finished shirts, having soaked in the dye overnight, waiting to be rinsed.

I rinsed each shirt in cold water in the sink, and when the water ran clear, put all of them in the washing machine and ran it through a full cold water wash cycle (but didn’t put in any detergent or fabric softener.)  Then I put them in the dryer and dried them normally.  Here are the finished shirts, awaiting delivery!

The party was a huge success, and didn’t cost a lot (certainly far less than the cost of renting a pool, or going to a pizza/video-game restaurant.)  The girls all loved it, and my fifth-grader decided she wants to do the same thing for her birthday this spring!