Before You Go: Making Mickey Tie-Dye T-Shirts

Usually our Walt Disney World trips consist of our family of seven, plus one or two extra grandparents. For our 2009 visit, though, we truly had a Grand Gathering. My mom and dad came, along with two of their grandchildren, plus my sister-in-law. We decided a group that big needed matching t-shirts!

I looked around on the internet and found the directions for making Mickey tie-dye t-shirts here.

After reviewing several different sets of directions, I settled on the one that had step by step photos. Basically, the process goes like this:

1. Buy white t-shirts, wash according to directions on package. Do not use fabric softener.
2. Print an outline of Mickey's head from the internet, copy it onto cardboard, and trace it onto the shirt front.
3. Stitch around the outline on both layers of the shirt (front and back) with white dental floss.
4. Pull the thread tight so that Mickey's head pops up.
5. Rubber band the rest of the shirt.
6. Dye Mickey's head first. Put plastic wrap around it and secure with rubber bands before dyeing the rest of the shirt.
7. Follow the dye instructions as far as how long the dye should be in the fabric, etc.
8. Remove the rubber bands first, then the floss.

Our results were pretty good, but not every shirt turned out perfectly. Here are some of the lessons I learned:

• The bigger shirts turned out better. All the kids' shirts, plus mine and my sister-in-law's, came from big multi-packs of boys' t-shirts. My husband's and my parents' were individually purchased. They were made from much thicker material. All of their Mickey heads were very defined. There was also a lot more white space on their shirts, because it was harder to penetrate the thicker material with the dye. 
• Stitching the Mickey heads was the most time consuming part. It took me several days to stitch all the shirts, and a few hours to dye them all. I am in search of a machine stitch method, but at this point I don't know of a thread that would work.
• Be patient when applying dye. We had shirts that were missing part of Mickey's ear, and shirts that had a big yellow blob in the middle instead of a Mickey head. Let the dye soak in and reevaluate before adding more dye. 
• Mistakes can be salvaged! We used a pink permanent marker to fill in the missing ear. We also used a bleach pen to outline Mickey's head on the yellow blob shirt.
• When removing rubber bands and floss, watch the scissors! I managed to cut not one, but two holes in my own shirt while I was removing rubber bands. 

The shirts have turned out to be a fun and inexpensive souvenir of our trip. We will make new shirts for our January 2011 trip. We will also be trying the same method on sweatshirts. 
I'm also planning to try making Mickey heads on colored shirts with the bleach pen.


There is a cute video tutorial on making the t-shirts here and step by step instructions here.


Have fun!!