Dip-Dye Fourth of July

Fourth of a July is a big holiday for our family as it's the one time a year that we are all on vacation at the same time. 

As the kids get older, their jobs and schedules are making this harder and harder to achieve and the time we're having all together is shrinking to a weekend or even just one day. 

Every year we choose some type of wearable art project to celebrate...

 

And this year we tried dip-dying.

I chose it because it was relatively simple and we all weren't going to be there until the actual day of Fourth of July.

The kids brought both denim and white items that they already owned or that they found at thrift stores.

The first step was bleaching out the denim...

 

This step took much longer than we expected so there was lots of hurry up and wait.  

I started with a three parts water to two parts bleach mix but that was taking a long time.  Lets just say that watching denim get bleached out is akin to watching paint dry...

That's when Jim suggested industrial strength bleach.  What?  There's different bleach strengths?  He ran to the hardware store and we mixed the stronger bleach;  two parts water and one part bleach.  

That sped things up a bit but it still took us a couple of hours to bleach out our items.

After bleaching, we had to wash and dry everything before dip dying.  In hindsight, we should have bleached days in advance to save time.  Experience is the greatest teacher.

When we finally got to the dip-dying...that went incredibly quickly and the results were immediate...

Bleach pens came in handy for fixing the stray drip...



Or for use as a design element...



Ideally, we should have let each color dry before dipping in the next but it was already becoming late afternoon...



So we rinsed out the dye while the items were still wet which affected the vibrancy...

But not the fun factor...



We also found that pre-worn and old denim bleached out the best.  Really dark, new denim never quite bleached out to white...more of a gray.

And the colors were more muted...which might be desirable for a more understated look...


Not all of us chose to dip-dye.  Ellie used her bleached denim shirt as a canvas for a painted design...
 

And we have a new furry family member, Moose, who was there to help tame the zoo...

Moose is calm in comparison.
By the time we were finished, there was very little time to wash/dry our items and get dressed for the night so we scattered without a group picture.



I remembered to snap one picture after dinner and before the fireworks...

I think we all agree that we'd like to re-try the dip dye activity...especially if we spread it out over a series of days, doing one dye step at a time and letting each step dry thoroughly in the sun before rinsing.

Time was our issue this year.  A harbinger of years to come, I think.

That means we'll have to come up with another way.

Maybe I'll have to mail pre-work or prep kits to everyone next year...hmmm....

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You can see our past patriotic projects here:

2014:  Patriotic Wrap Bracelets Part I and Part II
2013:  The Jean Shorts of July

2012:  The Feet of the Fourth

2011:  Fascinators (Part I) and How We Made Them (Part II)

2010:  T-Shirts

2009:  T-Shorts

2008:  Baseball Hats