Homemade Tie-Dyed Shirts Make Great Christmas Gifts for Babyboomers

Anyone over the age of 50 remembers the macramé that hung all through the house and in the windows, tie-dyed shirts, and the big, bulky pendants with peace symbols that hung from a beaded wire around the neck. You can give the retro gifts that are now back in style. Making a bit of the past for a senior or teenager can be rewarding and a whole lot of fun.

Make a Tie-Dyed Shirt With a Starburst.

I remember the first time I redecorated the house. I was in my phase of self-sufficiency where I tried to identify all the plants in the yard that were edible or medicinal and use them. My family never stayed healthier. It was because of the plants. Everyone was afraid that they would have to take some of the home remedies and chose never to complain of any illness.

I also made all the decorations for my home at the time. I had macramé curtains with light blue and brown beads in the kitchen. I used brick front to brick off a sidewall, and made tie dyed curtains for the bedroom. The curtains were white muslin and had designs of yellow, orange and light citrus green through out. They matched the florescent yellow walls and orange trim of the room. Thinking back, it really was bright, glow in the dark, so to speak, but gave me the opportunity to try my hand at tie dying.

You can make various designs on the material by the way you tie it and add tight rubber bands. It is always best to start with a white shirt, whether it is a t-shirt or dress shirt, and add color to it. If you are going to use several colors that will be overlapping you need several colors of rubber bands. The areas that will be forever white can be colored one color and never removed until the process is completely finished.

Gather pieces of material and wrap rubber bands around it as tight as you can. Use the color code so that you know which ones won't be removed until the process is finished. Knot the shirt by taking pieces of it and tying knots. Knot it over the knots and keep doing it, wrapping rubber bands around them and gathering them up and knotting one more time or wrapping with rubber bands.

Use a monochromatic theme to die and use the lightest shade for the first dying. Follow the package directions for dying. You may need to add salt to set the color. Remove from the water and rinse until it runs clean. Remove all the rubber bands except the white area ones. Rewrap and tie the shirt and tie it again. This time dye in a deeper shade. Rinse and drip-dry after you removed the rubber bands.

If you fold a T-shirt meeting the shoulders and then bringing the end up to form a square with sleeves, you can create the starbursts. Once it is a square bring the opposing diagonal corners together to form a cone with the wide part toward the sleeve. Fold the cone to make a smaller cone and bind with rubber bands.

If you fold the cone like an accordion instead, it will be more symmetrical when finished. Inject different colors with a syringe at different levels of the tied off cone. Run the sections under the faucet to rinse and when it is all prerinsed that way remove the bands and rinse in water. Hang to drip dry.