Not anymore, actually. Welcome to 2009, and the Jacquard Products Tie Dye Kit. The dye gets mixed in squirt bottles, the soda ash for pre-soaking your shirts makes the colors super-vibrant, there's gloves and rubber bands and, oh yeah, an instructional DVD. Go ahead and laugh, but my daughter and her friends watched the entire thing and then they made some professional-looking shirts. (My son and his friends opted to skip the DVD; their shirts came out pretty well, too-- with a bit of guidance from those who'd watched it.) It's like a Grateful Dead tour up in my house, people.
One kit dyes up to 15 shirts (we did nine and had plenty of leftover dye) which makes it a great kids' party activity, and unlike every other time I've done tie-dye before, if you follow the instructions, the shirts really are colorfast after the washout and run through the dryer. Now that's groovy. -Mir
Get your Jacquard Tie Dye Kit from Amazon.
