Background on the Mickey Mouse Tie-dye Shirts:
I originally made the first Mickey Mouse tie-dye matching shirts and this post for my family back in 2011. I did it because I had seen the idea on social media and thought it would be really fun for us. Since then I have learned that dressing identically helps a lot in crowded locations. It makes it so much easier to spot each other. It also makes it easy when and if, despite my best efforts and constant head counting, one of my children wanders off or accidentally gets left behind by the group of cousins she is hanging out with. I can let personnel know my child is wearing the exact same shirt as I am and they can describe it on the radios immediately. It makes finding them fast. I decide to post this Mickey tie-dye shirt tutorial for all of you to help you make your own shirts for your Disney trips.
Oh, and although I’m better at Photoshop manipulation these days, these photos make me laugh, so I’m keeping them this way.
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Ready for it? I’m going to post pictures of our Disney shirts. To protect the identity of my kids, I had a little fun in Photoshop…
So how did we do them? Easy peasy.
Materials Needed:
- Plain t-shirt
- Dental Floss
- Mickey Mouse ear template
- Rubber bands
- Desired colors of tie-dye ink. We used red and blue and orange and black.
Mickey Mouse Tie-dye Shirt Tutorial (Both shirts):
1) Downloaded this template of Mickey Mouse ears if you haven’t already.
2) Next trace that template on our shirts in pencil.
3) Sew around the Mouse ears with dental floss. I’ve read you should use waxed. I used the Teflon slippery kind. I wish I had used the waxed.
4) Pull the dental floss tight to make a puckered “balloon”.
Now this is where I diverged on the two techniques. By the way, I skipped the soda ash step some other tutorials recommend, and I was perfectly happy with the results.
Orange and black Halloween Mickey tie-dye shirts tutorial. (concentric circle idea)
1) Put rubber bands around the puckered balloon to keep it separate. I did mine right on the line of the floss–I’ve since read you should make sure it is below it to keep it pretty separate.
2) Using the puckered balloon as the end, wrap rubber bands to section off the shirt.. By the end it should look something like a snake.
3) Use fabric dyes in any pattern you want until each section you want colored is colored. For more coverage, make sure you get into the folds or grooves of the shirt. If you want more white to show through, leave some space between dye areas.
4) Be careful not to let dyed sections touch each other–color will transfer. My two “snakes” are a little too close. Also, I got some color transfer when I had the shirts on the grocery store bags. The ink from those rubbed off onto the orange sections.
5) Wrap in plastic and let it sit for a day or so. Sorry no picture of that, but what I did was use the plastic sheeting in the above picture. I wrapped the first shirt, then added the second, and then the third keeping the clear plastic between each additional shirt. I then wrapped the whole thing together and put it in a plastic bag for a couple of days.
6) Rinse your shirt until the water runs clear.
Blue and red Swirls around Mickey Tie-dye Tutorial:
1) Lay your shirt flat with the Mickey poking up in the center.
2) Take the Mickey and twist it clockwise gathering up the shirt as you go.
3) Once the shirt resembles something like a fat disk, carefully wrap rubber bands across it dividing the shirt like a pie. Keep the Mickey head poking up.
4) Color the Mickey head with fabric dye–wrap with plastic wrap and secure with elastics. Then use the fabric dyes in any order you want until on the pie until each section you want colored is colored.
5) For more coverage, make sure you get into the folds or grooves of the shirt.
6) Be careful not to let dyed sections touch each other–color will transfer.
7) Wrap in plastic and let it sit for a day or so.
Once the dyes have set for a day or two, unwrap each shirt and run under cold water until the water run-off is clear. Dry the shirts and wash them again.
On the blue and red Mickey shirts, the stitched Mickey didn’t show up well. To rectify that I tried using bleach pen to trace the outline. That didn’t work too well, so I used a bleach with a toothpick and a q-tip to trace the out line and that worked much, much better.
Conclusion:
I hope these tutorials with pictures help you make your own fun Mickey Mouse tie-dye shirts. It’s been fun to see my kids continue to wear these through the years-even when we’re not at Disney. We also wear them to other amusement parks or crowded places when we need to keep a close watch on where everyone is.
Thanks for reading, and have a great day!
Fall 2017 note: I made the original shirts a couple of years ago and I had really large dye bottles which still had red, blue and black. I thought I could just reuse them. The blue came out fine, but the red turned pink after the final wash and the black is really more navy blue at this point. I finally bought new red dye because the pink was unacceptable to me. It worked out fine.
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