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I make! Sharpie tie dye edition (2)

Remember this from last week?  It’s ok if you don’t.  There has been an abnormal amount of posts between then and now.

Last week, we played with permanent markers and isopropyl alcohol and managed to tie dye some cloth.  Not t-shirts.  Because can’t imagine the girls wearing tie dye t-shirts on a regular basis.  And thus, we transformed those very colorful pieces of cloth into these!

The stuffed milk carton is a cell phone charm, which is attached to a cell phone, which is in the bag.

This one ended up being sewn by another counselor-like person because the kiddo wasn't able to make it.

And this one is mine, which was the sample.

You’ll note that there were four pieces of cloth from last time and only three bags shown.  That’s because one of the girls suffered a quite a few technical difficulties and wasn’t quite able to finish her bag.  But instead of opting to let me whip it up for her, she decided she would  finish it on her own as she was starting to feel more comfortable with the sewing machine toward the end.  Good for her.

I had the girls follow Tally’s instructions for her lined dice bags and you can find a well-written tutorial on her site.  The lining we used was more of the same cloth we had tie dyed (but not dyed, of course).  As for mine, I made a couple of modifications. But first, a story.

I have been thinking about starting Yaris on clicker training (or really just training her in general).  I’ve been terribly lax about her education and I don’t really want her to grow up to be a heathen.  I haven’t really had the time to train her like I had with Choco.  So, while Yaris is quite smart, she’s wasting all that smart on things like getting people to play with her or how to best dig a trench in the backyard (she actually hasn’t dug any trenches in a long time).  Well, it’s time to change that, but in order to entice her to learn new things, I need a bag of treats.  The treats I can handle.  I make my own training treats and I’ll probably post the recipe sometime in the future.  The bag part wasn’t working.  They were too expensive for what I wanted to do, or too ugly, or too large, or too small, or had too many extra things I didn’t want…it just wasn’t what I was looking for.  So, I made my own.

Enter my modification(s):

It actually isn’t much of a modification.  I just made two smaller tubes of cloth, flipped them inside out, and then sewed them in at step 7 from the tutorial.  Actually, that’s what I had meant to do but I had forgotten until I had almost finished.  Good thing I am friends with the seam ripper.  I have two loops because I was uncertain about weight distribution when I was sewing this up.  With two loops, I can either hook the carabiner through both loops or just one depending on how many treats are in the bag.  And a carabiner works for me because I am almost always wearing a belt.  You can take a look at all the other treat bags on the market for ideas if you don’t want a carabiner.

The other modification was also minor.  I recently came into possession of a Crop-a-dile eyelet and punch setter and I wanted to try it out.  So in place of the buttonhole for the ribbon, I used two 3/16″ eyelets side by side.  I don’t have a picture of it, sorry.  It works just fine in case you can’t figure out how to use your buttonhole foot on your sewing machine.  You may want to put an extra liner where the eyelets are though.  Depending on how loose a weave your cloth is, it may rip and fray.

So, I am now in possession of one very colorful treat bag.  I kind of matches Yaris’ personality and I’m sure it’ll make all the other dogs jealous.  I’m sure.

I make! Sharpie tie dye edition (1)

[EDIT: Here is a link to part 2.]

A little while ago, I saw this.  It’s an interesting experiment involving permanent markers and rubbing alcohol.  Basically, you color on some fabric using your permanent markers and then drop a few drops of rubbing alcohol on it.  The permanent ink the the markers is not soluble in water, but it is soluble in alcohol.  So as you drop the alcohol onto the ink and the alcohol spreads through the cloth, it takes some of the ink with it creating a melded, melty blob of color.  Yes, those are scientific terms.  Why do you ask?

I thought this would be fun to do with the jr. high/high school girls during one of our Friday night times BUT I also felt they probably would not be willing to include tie dyed shirts in their wardrobe.  I doubted that they had any white t-shirts just lying around and I didn’t want to buy a bunch for them.  It’s hard to get plain t-shirts of quality in quantity for reasonable prices.  However, I did have a large bolt of whitish, canvas-y cloth.  Thus, I decided we could tie dye blocks of cloth and then make something from those dyed pieces of cloth.

We basically followed the directions from the link.  We didn’t use Sharpies though, as I don’t have any.  I DO have a giant set of very colorful Bic permanent markers, which are a great deal cheaper than actual Sharpies and they’re basically the same thing.  Also, I ended up using 91% isopropyl alcohol, since that’s what I had (it’s what I use to clean my electronics).

Here’s what we ended up with, which isn’t really tie dying since we didn’t tie anything…but they ARE dyed.

You can see where we started getting creative and deciding we didn’t need to use the cups anymore.  I think the whole thing turned out rather nicely.

I set the colors using a quick soak in a vinegar/water solution.  It was probably 5-10 minutes in about a gallon of cold water and 2 tbsp of vinegar.  Then I threw it into the washer for a rinse and drain.  Finally, it was into a hot dryer until dry, about 15 minutes.  They came out rather wrinkly, so I will likely iron them with a hot iron later since I’ll need these things to be flat for the next part of the project.  I’m pretty sure the colors are set with my intricate post processing.

Next time, you see what these interesting dyed blocks of cloth become.