I have a confession- I’m 32 years old, and up until this summer, I have never tie dyed anything. Not one bandana in Girl Scouts. Not one pillowcase in my Presbyterian youth group. And most definitely not a shirt at band camp.
I felt as though I had missed out on a crafty/cultural rite of passage. So, this summer I decided to tie dye some onesies. They were horrible failures. Fast forward to this weekend, August 2011, where my good friend, KJ, will be doing the Susan G Komen 3 day walk to end breast cancer. This is the first time she’s done something like this and a lot of us are super jazzed for her. We’re so jazzed, in fact, that Husband and I, along with other friends and relations will be going to the closing ceremonies at Soldier Field on Sunday. I have never been to something like this, but I was pretty sure that we should all go in matching t-shirts.
One of our dearly beloved friends, Captain Dandy, has known KJ and Husband for years. The good Captain had made a nice contribution to the fund-raising for the walk, and he had also agreed to wear one of our silly shirts. Now, Captain Dandy is a man’s man- he plays and coaches rugby for crying out loud, and I was pretty sure that I couldn’t get away with just puffy painting a tshirt for our cheering section. I did already have to try to convince him that we had to wear pink which was a difficult task unto itself. The conversation regarding shirt color went like this…no really, I cut and pasted it from our online chat:
Me: Yours will be a pink shirt most likely and I think it has a fun logo on it
Cap’n Dan: Pink? Arggg. Is everybody wearing pink??
Me: Yes.
Cap’n Dan: I dont care if everybody is doing it. But not black, black would not be good in August in Chicago–too hot!
Me: grey? white? green? You’d be the weirdo wearing green…but i think you’re ok with that. Or there’s always red? You can say your red is a dark pink!
Cap’n Dan: Ill do the same as the group. What ever that is.
Me: Then pucker up for PINK.
Dan: make mine tye-dye!! Hehehe
Husband is making the design that will go on the front that shows Captain Dandy giving a grin and a thumbs up and the text says: “Cap’n Dandy Supports Lady Tata’s”. (That’s KJ’s team name, instead of Lady GaGA, it’s Lady TaTa.” However, dan gave me a great idea- I’ll try to make the pink a little less girly and TIE DYE the shirts! (It’s still girly, I’m not going to lie about that.)
So last night I accordion folded my shirts and dunked them in pink dye. Learning from my former onsies tie dye mistakes, I used GOOD gloves that wouldn’t crack immediately leaving my hands a red and seemingly bloody mess. (Yes, I was getting comments on my hand color for days.) The shirts have been rinsed, washed and I will probably wash them one more time before husband irons on his design, but they turned out MUCH better than the onesies did! This is what I made today.
homemadejamstuff 