Unplugged Challenge:Wrinkle (tie dye T-shirt)

This week's Unplugged Challenge theme at "Unplug Your Kids" was "Wrinkle", so I taught Blaze how to twist and wad-up a T-shirt to tie dye it.
I just learned this twisting technique a couple weeks ago, so this was my first time trying it as well. Before this, I had always just tied string or rubber bands wherever I didn't want the dye to touch the fabric, but the teenage boy I tutor in the afternoons, took me into his art class to show me how they were doing the spiral designs, after I admired the T-shirt he had made in class and asked him how it was done.




Start by pinching a spot of fabric in the middle of the front of the T-shirt and twist.




After the T-shirt has been twisted into a tight spiral, hold it in that shaped using 2 or 3 rubber bands. (That's pretty wrinkled)




We used blue and black acid dyes, because that was what we had on-hand. If I do this again I'm going to make the colors more contrasting and mix them stronger, so that the colors are darker.

There are 2 ways that the art class used to add their dyes to the shirts. They had some of their dyes in squirt bottles and some in bowls that they dipped the shirts into. We tried both, but I think Blaze liked the squirt bottle best.






We really drenched our shirt with dye, but it's not necessary to be so heavy-handed. Leaving some spots of white will add more detail to the design and brighten up the shirt.



Then we rinsed it in cool water until the water ran clear and dried it.

The dark colors made a fairly subtle spiral design.