We used a Tulip One-Step Tie-Dye kit in primary colors from JoAnn's, plus a bottle of Tulip One-Step Fashion Dye in orange. I removed everything from the kit box before the party because it's packaged in pink with cutie-pie girls on the front and we were having an all-boy party - just didn't want them to get the idea that this was a craft for girls!

I had to search a little for 100% cotton shirts. I just don't know why Joann's and Michael's only sell 50/50 shirts right next to the dye. Most dye instructions direct you to use all-cotton fabric so that the dye will take properly. Luckily, Target was having a sale on cotton t-shirts and I snapped up almost all of their remaining white shirts for $3 each. Then I washed and dried them before the party. I also soaked them in a soda ash solution, which I had seen suggested on various websites about tie-dyeing, but later discovered that the Tulip dye already contained soda ash, making this step unnecessary.

The directions in the kit were great, describing many different tie-dye techniques. It also included a bunch of rubber bands and some pretty useless gloves (get a package of medical gloves from the drugstore instead). I gathered extra rubber bands, plastic grocery bags, a couple of plastic tarps for the yard, and paper towels. The boys all wore old clothes to the party, too.

At the beginning of the party, we gave each boy a shirt labeled with their initials on the care tag and helped them twist, pull, and band their shirts using the sunburst, pleat, and swirl techniques described in the instructions. For a sunburst you grab a tiny bit of fabric, pull it up into a tube shape and band it along the length of the tube. To do a pleat shirt, lay out the shirt flat, pleat it, then band it every couple of inches. A swirl shirt is made by pinching the fabric where you want the center of the swirl and then twisting the fabric around this point into a flat spiral (looks a little like a cinnamon roll to me). Band around the sprial with 3 rubber bands, creating 6 wedge shapes.

Just before we headed outside I added water to the dye powders in the squirt bottles in which they were packaged.  The dye loses its intensity after 45 minutes, so we had to work quickly. Since we had only four bottles of dye, I called four boys at a time outside. Each kid was instructed to try and get the dye deep into the folds of the shirt. According to the packaging we had enough dye to do 9 shirts, which we did, but the shirts were all youth sizes and some didn't use a lot of dye. Next time I'd buy a few more bottles or maybe another kit.

When each boy finished, we placed his shirt in a plastic grocery bag and let it set overnight. The next morning I cut the bands and rinsed each shirt separately in cold water. Two runs through a hot wash cycle and then into the dryer and we were ready to deliver them. The boys were thrilled to get their shirts and I think they made a much more memorable take-home gift than a bag of plastic trinkets.

The one thing I might do differently next time is to skip the red dye. It made the white sections of the shirts turn a little pinkish. Other than that, though, this was a great party activity for 7 to 11 year old boys.