My friend showed me a picture of a Captain America tie dye shirt she found online and I thought it would be fun to make those with my kids for the 4th of July. This project is time consuming but I think you’ll agree that the finished product is worth it!

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The kids and I set out on our first ever tie dye adventure by following the directions for the shirt from I Love To Create. My son’s shirt is boy’s size 4/5 and my daughter’s shirt is girl’s size 6/6x.

Supplies for 1 shirt:

• white t-shirt
• Tulip one-step dye in blue  (NOTE: the 0.16 oz bottle of dye was just enough for two kid sized shirts)
• Tulip tie-dye kit in red (NOTE: I only used about 1/4 of the red dye for two kid sized shirts)
• 4 zip ties
• white fabric paint
• Cricut or star stencil
• 12 x 12 inch cardboard (not pictured)
• scissors (not pictured)
• pencil (not picture)
• non-permanent adhesive (not pictured)

Instructions:

1. Wash the shirt first. We started the project later in the evening and we had to rush the dye job before bed time because I forgot that I had to wash the shirts first.

2. The color pattern for the shirt from the inside of the design is blue, red, white, red, blue so there are 4 different regions. I am a former engineer so I like things to be as exact as possible. Instead of eye balling it, I found 4 circular objects that could be traced on the shirt.

I used a CD, a 6 inch plate, an 8 inch plate and a 10 inch plate. For an adult sized shirt you would need larger plates. We traced the circular items from largest to smallest onto the shirt. Doing it in that order makes it easier to keep all the circles centered. The kids liked the tracing part and I let each child trace their own shirt.

3. Next I started in the middle of the circle and gathered it upwards. My cute assistants tied the zip ties along the bottom of the pencil lines. (The dye comes with rubber bands but I thought that zip ties would hold tighter.) Do this 4 times – once for each circle.

Next, wet the shirt with water from the sink and wring it out. At this point I snipped off the excess portion of the ties. In retrospect I think I should have left them the way they were because it would have helped in the dying process.

Going into this project I fully intended to have my kids put the dye on the shirt but after reading all the warnings on the boxes I decided that it was safer for me to do this step. I filled the dye bottles with water as directed. I did the red dye first and then the blue dye. Remember to keep the shirt as level as possible so the dye doesn’t run in between the different tied off sections of the shirt.

This is what my shirts looked like after the dye was applied. I placed them on plastic wrap on my counter.  At this point I was really worried about how dark the blue color was and about how my dye was running together but it all turned out okay. I covered the shirts with plastic wrap so they wouldn’t dry out.

4. In the morning I ran the shirts under water in the sink until the water ran clear. I squeezed each section gently as I did this. This caused the dye to run together a little more and I was afraid that I was going to fail at my first attempt at these shirts. I was pleasantly surprised when I cut off the ties and the shirts looked pretty good!

5. I washed both shirts in hot water with a little detergent and dried them in the dryer. Next I measured the diameter of the blue circle in the middle. The points of the star are just touch the outside of the blue circle. The measurement was 3.75 inches. I used my Cricut to cut a star (Stand and Salute cartridge) from the middle of a 12×12 piece of thin cardboard. My settings for the Cricut was slow speed, high pressure, blackout and real dial size. (In the original directions, freezer paper was used but I didn’t have any so this was my work around.)

Before painting, I put plastic wrap inside the shirt so the paint would not leak through to the backside of the shirt. I placed the star where I wanted it in the middle of my shirt and then positioned the cardboard mask so that the star cutout fit. The cardboard is held in place by non-permanent adhesive.

I then removed the cutout and we painted. With Kara’s shirt I used the spray texture paint and it came out really thick. With Colin’s shirt, we used white acrylic paint and I liked that much better. I used two coats of acrylic paint with one hour of drying in between. Update: All the white acrylic paint washed off the shirt so I am going to redo it with the spray texture paint that I used on Kara’s shirt. The kids love our finished shirts and so do I!

If you are looking for another fun 4th of July project, check out my DIY patriotic temporary tattoos.

I think I might make myself one of these Captain America tie dye shirts when the next Captain America movie comes out.